


did you write the book of love

by amorremanet



Series: Right Where I Belong [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Shiro & the OMC), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Bisexual Disaster Keith (Voltron), But the endgame/focus is still Sheith, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Disability, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Kidge & Jeith to varying degrees, Friends With Benefits, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jewish Adam (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Shiro (Voltron), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Pining Keith (Voltron), Polyamorous Character, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro (Voltron) Has Multiple Sclerosis, Shiro (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Shiro (Voltron) is a Mess, Slice of Life, Tags Are Hard, ehhhh kinda?, galaxy garrison shenanigans, it's actually mostly linear with a few wonky exceptions, twinganes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-24 17:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16644920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: As far as Keith’s concerned, he only has one friend. This is somewhat of a problem, because that friend is Shiro, who is impossibly out of Keith’s league, more than he deserves, and the guy with whom Keith is embarrassingly in love. Worst of everything, though, is the fact that this love will be forever unrequited, because of course it will be.As far as Shiro’s aware, he only has two friends — three, if you count his boyfriend. Either way, Keith is the only friend who Shiro hasn’t slept with (yet). Not that he’s thinking about that. Keith relies on Shiro, trusts him in a way that Keith trusts no one else, and Shirocan’ttake advantage of that, not when Keith’s been hurt so many times. Anyway, Keith would never think ofShirothat way because why would he?Besides, Shiro needs to get through his upcoming six-month mission to Titan so he can clear that stress off his plate and tell Adam and Keith about his illness on his own terms. Then, after that, Shiro can focus on getting ready for Commander Holt’s next big mission, the one that will make history. What could possibly go wrong?(Or, “Keith and Shiro pine and make stunningly questionable life-choices.”)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In between running around the bureaucratic maypole about graduation, trying to save my health insurance, work, family drama, fighting the depression gremlins, and one rare instance of good family stuff, I have nominally been doing NaNoWriMo. It mostly consists of Sheith being emotionally dysfunctional dipshits at each other and making questionable life-choices, because that’s sort of a staple in my brand.
> 
> This is eventually going to include them having Totally Platonic Sex because…… questionable life-choices.
> 
> Fair warning: Adam and Shiro are going to break up, but not about the Kerberos mission. It’s going to happen earlier than in canon, but also far less acrimoniously. Shiro and the OMC, Yuki, are platonically in love with each other — like, they are genuinely platonically in love with each other, as opposed to Sheith, who end up romantically in love but being idiots about it.
> 
> The James/Keith, when it gets its time in the sun, is going to be a mild mutually self-destructive garbage fire. The Keith/Pidge, on the other hand, is going to be kind of awkward but cute. Also, Keith and Adam are going to get to be friends, eventually.
> 
> Other ships that don’t involve Shiro or Keith: Hunk is dating Kinkade in the background a bit. Hunk and Lance get together eventually, as do Kinkade and James. After Hunk allegedly dies on the Kerberos mission, Lance also hooks up with Shiro’s brother, Ryou.
> 
> Also, Keith and Shiro are both polyamorous, and they are different degrees of oblivious to this fact about themselves. Someone please help these boys, they need it so much.
> 
> I shamelessly stole the title from Don McLean’s “ **[American Pie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsV5-Hv-7U)** ,” which is a low-to-mid-key musical aesthetic for this fic. Or at least, it has been in my mind.

The Garrison’s on-campus officer dorms are off-puttingly nice. They’re always clean, unless Lt. Trevor You Idiot McKay decides to pull some stupid, drunken stunt or other. There’s even a game-room in the basement, with tables for pool and ping-pong.

Even though he’s been to these dorms before, Keith holds his breath as he crosses the threshold into the Lee Building. Skulking through the corridors, he sticks close to Shiro. No one will argue with Keith’s presence if he’s with Shiro. Questioning the Galaxy Garrison’s Golden Boy is something that most people won’t even consider doing.

Keith inhales deeply when they get to Shiro’s room, when he follows Shiro into his little off-white-walled slice of Hell. Once they’re both in, Keith unlaces his boots and tugs them off. Maybe Shiro says he doesn’t care whether or not people wear their shoes inside his place, but Keith feels weird about that idea. It’s like he’s tracking whatever’s wrong with him into someone else’s space.

Aside from the two single bedrooms — one for Shiro and one for Lt. Ollie Harkness, his roommate since they were cadets — there’s an in-suite bathroom and shower, rather than the group showers that Keith has in the cadets’ dorms. Shiro and Harkness also have a common area with a kitchenette and fridge, a table, and a sofa that Shiro and Lt. West have probably had sex on. Thankfully, Harkness isn’t sitting there today, peering at Keith with their wide, owlish eyes as they’ve done so many times before, probably wondering why Shiro even bothers with a no-name fuck-up from nowhere special who won’t amount to anything.

 _(“Are you being serious, Kashi?”_ Shiro’s brother demanded, when Shiro let Keith spend the summer at the twins’ place out in the desert on the outskirts of Plaht City. _“This kid stole a Garrison car and took it for a joyride. Why do you want to risk your career and treat him like a stray kitten?”)_

Less thankfully, once Keith gets settled on Shiro’s bed, he can’t make himself focus on his reading for Montgomery. Which is stupid as Hell because pawing through documents on his Garrison-issued data-pad shouldn’t be that difficult. Still, every few moments, Keith glances up and catches himself watching Shiro. Hanging his uniform’s jacket on the back of his desk chair leaves Shiro in just his gray pants and the black t-shirt he’s got on today. As he stretches out, Keith can make out hints of the muscles in Shiro’s back but not much more. He only sees Shiro’s hips thanks to a perfect storm of his pants sagging while his shirt pulls up.

If Keith didn’t know better — that is: if he didn’t know that Shiro would never cheat on Adam (on Lt. West, that is), certainly never with somebody like Keith — then he’d almost think that Shiro wore these ever-so-slightly oversized clothes specifically to keep Keith from checking out his body.

Even though Shiro wouldn’t do that, it’s good advice. Unfortunately, the more Keith tries to avoid ogling, the more his hands tremble around his pad. Clutching his stylus doesn’t help him any, and every time the words start swimming together, Keith’s right back to what he shouldn’t be doing: _staring_ at Shiro while he sorts through his clothes and boxes of nutrition supplements, drinking in the sight of Shiro’s body as much as he can right now (which isn’t much, but God, Shiro’s too beautiful to be real), watching him and _feeling things_ like Keith has any right to look at him like this.

As if Shiro packing for his next big mission is really something that Keith is allowed to care about.

 _(“Why are you reading about the Calypso mission,”_ sneered David, one of the other kids at Keith’s last group-home. _“They don’t let rejects into the Galaxy Garrison. They don’t let idiots fly to space. And they don’t let worthless worms like you make anything of themselves in the real world, so why even bother dreaming.”)_

Of course, Shiro catches Keith staring.

Of course, he looks over from packing Garrison gray polypropylene bags with the clothes that he can’t take with him to Titan. He catches Keith in the act of watching him get dressed like some kind of freak who doesn’t understand the concept of boundaries or faking like he’s normal.

Of course this happens, and it’s what Keith deserves.

Any amount of staring at Shiro will always press Keith’s luck, such as he has any. What little he passes off as luck. Sooner or later, Shiro’s going to figure out what he’s doing and let Keith get kicked out like he should’ve been almost six months ago, when he punched Griffin in the mouth. Keith’s lungs clench around themselves, because maybe this will be the time that he runs out of anything resembling good fortune. Maybe the universe is bored with its game of indulging Keith, letting him dream that he might get anywhere in life, and now, Shiro will realize that Keith is broken—

But then, Shiro smiles like he has no idea what’s going on. Beams at Keith like he doesn’t think anything is wrong.

“Rough day?” he says, unnervingly blissful. “Or is it just a tough reading?”

 _Why don’t you ask your boyfriend_ , Keith doesn’t let himself say because he’d sound like a petulant brat and that hot, acrid rush of emotion isn’t fair. It’s not Shiro’s fault that Adam TA’s for Professor Montgomery.

It isn’t Adam’s — no, fuck. It isn’t _Lt. West’s_ fault, either. He didn’t get to pick who he TA’s for. Wasn’t even a case like Shiro’s, where Iverson didn’t want to work with anyone else and refused to consider a different TA.

On top of that, Lt. West actually tries to treat Keith like all the other cadets, the ones who have real futures and didn’t come to the Garrison with a built-in factory defect nobody can explain. Especially since Keith’s last birthday — his seventeenth — Lt. West has acted almost like they could be friends.

“Keith,” Shiro prods, using that intense, heartfelt voice he always breaks out when he’s being serious or trying to keep Keith grounded. “Did something happen? Or is the reading getting to you?”

When Keith shrugs and supposes that he’s had worse on both counts, he’s just kinda tired, Shiro sighs in relief. He erupts in a grin without missing a beat, almost like he’s proud of Keith. Absent any apparent cares in the universe, he ruffles one of his big, beautiful hands over his short, black hair. His tawny skin glistens under the fluorescent overhead lights. Granted, his skin always seems to glisten. Sometimes, it’s like Shiro walked straight out of a cheesecake magazine centerfold or the cover of those tacky romance novels that he likes so much. Unquestionably, his beauty is one of the worst things about him — at least, one of the worst things for Keith.

“I dunno what you think would’ve happened, anyway.” Keith lets himself flop back against Shiro’s wall, talking to the ceiling. “All I did was go to class and run drills in the simulator. Same as always.”

Tilting his head, Shiro knots his thick eyebrows in concern. His voice ties itself even tighter as he prods, “Anybody giving you trouble?”

“Griffin, I guess. But when _isn’t_ he giving me trouble.”

“So, it’s no more than usual, with him? He hasn’t tried anything new?”

Keith shrugs. Forces his eyes down to his pad. “It’s like Sister Clare used to say: that little fuck doesn’t give people trouble, he _is_ trouble.”

In fairness, she used to say, “boy” instead of, “fuck” because nuns don’t really cuss, but that’s beside the point.

In further fairness, she said things like that about Keith himself, not about James Griffin. Given precedent, Sister Clare would probably think that Griffin is about the greatest guy to ever grace the human race with his presence — second only to Shiro, obviously, because there’s no such thing as someone who doesn’t love Shiro. There are only people who love him, people who adore him, people who will do either of those things if they give him a fraction of a foot in the door, and Keith, who’s just so…

Well. It isn’t really important, what Keith is or isn’t. Not like anything can go anywhere, with him and Shiro.

But Keith can’t dwell on that, right now. Or ever, preferably. Not when Shiro’s taking deep breaths that just barely miss the mark on being meditative. Especially not when he pokes about what Keith means and what’s been going on or not.

He considers things for a moment before explaining, “I just mean, like? Griffin isn’t locking me in closets—”

“He _better_ not be. Uncle Mitch won’t let him off so easy, if he does it again.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “You’re literally the only person who thinks Iverson let Griffin off easy, Shiro.”

Just like he’s the only one on campus who calls his godfather, _“Uncle Mitch”_ instead of, _“Iverson,”_ or, _“Commander,”_ or the always easy, forever reliable, _“sir.”_ At that, Shiro only breaks out the more familiar form of address when he’s with his boyfriend, or Keith, or Iverson himself. Which is probably some shade of weird, but Keith can’t deal with that right now. He shuts his eyes and sets his like this can get him out of dealing with everything that particular strangeness of Shiro’s cannot possibly mean.

Curling his legs up to his chest, Keith props his chin on his knees. Less bone rubs against his jaw than it did about eleven months ago, when Shiro first found him at Adlai E. Stevenson High, when he up and decided that he was going to bail Keith out of juvie and be his friend. His orange-and-cream uniform hugs him comfortably, rather than hanging on him like it did back in September. Still, everything feels like Keith borrowed some of Shiro’s hand-me-downs and everyone but Griffin is just too polite to tell him that he looks about as becoming as lipstick and mascara on an elephant who won’t get off their couch because nobody will acknowledge it for long enough to to make it leave.

God, it takes effort not to cringe at himself over thoughts like this. Still, he can’t let on to Shiro how he’s feeling. Especially not during the next seven days.

“Anyway, it’s not important,” Keith mutters. He hugs himself around the shins, digging his fingertips into the seams of his gray uniform pants. “Griffin’s himself. He sucks, and not in the good way. But I can handle him. It’d be nice if Harris and Montgomery would quit acting like he’s God’s gift to their classes, but I get it? Griffin works hard enough, and he acts like a perfect suck-up, and teachers _always_ cream themselves for him like those two.”

Whatever Keith meant by that, he didn’t want to send Shiro into a silence so arctic, he wishes he’d brought a sweatshirt.

Looking back to Shiro, Keith swallows thickly and braces himself for the worst. Instead, he finds Shiro grimacing at the floor, with his full, pouty lips contorted into something like a sneer and his nose scrunched up like he just found dog shit on the soles of his boots. Shaking his head, he lets slip a throaty, halfway-retching sound like most people wouldn’t believe he’s capable of making.

Or anyway, they wouldn’t believe that Lt. Takashi Fucking Shirogane, the Galaxy Garrison’s Golden Boy, could make a noise like that. Between his laundry list of broken records and the near-perfect marks he got while he was a cadet, between the dust that he’s left everyone around him standing in and his ten-mile-long, credulity-straining catalog of accomplishments earned and missions flown, between that perfect lantern jawline and those incredible eight-pack abs and his unfathomably, impossibly gentle gray eyes, he shatters everybody’s expectations and leaves them clamoring for more. According to popular scuttlebutt, he’s on the fast-track to make Lieutenant Commander as soon as he’s eligible. Some of Keith’s classmates think that Iverson, Holt, and Admiral Sanda would promote Shiro right now, if they could get away with it.

True enough, Lt. Takashi Fucking Shirogane is nothing short of perfect. He’s gorgeous but modest, talented but hard-working, perpetually encouraging, and so pointedly modest, it almost makes you want to punch him but why bother when he makes bruises look good and a broken nose would somehow only make him prettier. More than anything else, Lt. Takashi Fucking Shirogane is just a **_Good_** _Guy_ , capitalized and with the necessary emphasis because he’s the sort of noble, selfless, idealistic innocent who makes people believe in all the old stories about Sir Galahad, Saint Sebastian, and Steven G. Rogers. All up, definitely not the sort of person who’d roll his eyes and stick out his tongue over the mere mention of a Galaxy Garrison Cadet.

 _Shiro_ , on the other hand, can’t content himself with simply making like he’s gonna heave. He has to drag his hand through his hair and tug on that perpetually fluffy forelock. For a moment, Keith would swear he sees Shiro’s fingers tremble — but he must be imagining things. Or maybe Shiro was just shoring up his resolve before yanking so hard, it looks like he’s trying to tear off his own scalp. Must not shake him around how he wants it to, because he still looks like a human thunderstorm when he turns his gaze to Keith.

Then, Shiro sighs and his entire body seems to wilt, as if someone stole whatever wind was working with his sails.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles, allowing his shoulders to droop and hunch around his chest.

“Wait, just? Sorry, I didn’t — I mean, I don’t — wait, you’re sorry about what?”

“You know…” Shiro trails off with great significance and arches his eyebrows like that’s supposed to mean something.

“…I dunno, like? Did _you_ have a bad day? D’you feel sick or something?”

God, Keith hopes not. That’d really throw a wrench or three in Shiro’s plans. If he got sick enough, then it’d dump the entire toolbox in, too, totally derailing and short-circuiting all of Shiro’s notions about how this flight’s supposed to go — which might not be so bad for _Keith_ , personally. But it could fuck up all kinds of things for Shiro, so Keith can’t let that happen.

For a long moment, Shiro fixes his eyes on Keith’s face like he’s searching for something. Whether he finds it or not, he rewards Keith with one of _Those_ _Smiles_ , the painfully earnest ones he sometimes pulls up that make Keith’s heart clench up like it’s forgotten how to beat.

They all follow a pattern, _Those Smiles_ , and Keith’s come to know it well. Shiro’s lips quirk like he’s afraid he’ll say too much or scare you off. That barely lasts a moment before he decides to throw himself headlong into it with some reckless, _“Damn it all to Hell, you’ll never get this specific chance again”_ abandon. His eyes don’t mist over, but they threaten you like he could start crying at any second, especially if you look away and so you stay glued to his them. They glimmer, starlight-bright, as if they want to lead Keith away from the right path and get him lost in some wandering woodland, where the Fair Folk can take him prisoner and have their way with him.

(But maybe that’d be a homecoming for Keith. Sister Mary Ignatius at the group-home always used to tell him, _“Honestly, Kogane. If I didn’t know better than to believe in such backwards, pagan superstitions, I’d swear that you were a Changeling child.”_ )

Worst of all, though, is the way that Shiro shimmers when he lets his face go all soft like this. Everything about him shines, and he radiates enough to heat the entire dormitory. Even right now, aiming that smile on Keith — one of the souls in this universe who surely deserves this kindness least — Shiro lights up with something tender, and fond, and so completely unlike everything else that Keith has known since he lost his Dad.

Pattern or no pattern, _Those Smiles_ refuse to go easy on Keith. His skin crawls, watching the way that Shiro looks at him. Warm waves of feeling wash over him, practically begging Keith to trust that he’s safe here. As he curls into an even tighter ball, his breath hitches in his throat, threatens to never come unstuck. Yet, he doesn’t want to look away. Doesn’t want to ask Shiro to stop, not least because he probably doesn’t realize he’s doing anything. Never mind how Keith has to make the most of the time they have, has to relish this unfamiliar feeling as much as possible while he still can because that option will be gone by this time next week.

 _Belief_ — the Garrison could make first contact with actual sentient extraterrestrials right now, and that would be infinitely less alien than how much faith Shiro puts in Keith. He’s had almost a year to get used to this, and he still isn’t. Every time Shiro looks at him like this — as if Keith _matters_ , as if anything about him has any value whatsoever — it hits Keith as hard as it did the first time and leaves him feeling so winded, he could collapse.

Maybe he’ll never understand. Maybe none of this will ever make sense to him.

By all rights, Montgomery’s reading should be different. Should be a complete breeze because all of it is commonsense stuff that wouldn’t faze a five-year-old. The words shouldn’t swim together before Keith’s eyes when he tries to go back to his data-pad. His head shouldn’t give him little twinges of pain like it can’t decide whether or not to start throbbing. If his building headache could either push into its full glory or get out of dodge already, then Keith might mind it less. He might forgive it for its existence because at least it would’ve made up its mind instead of dithering between two mutually exclusive options.

How Keith soldiers through twenty-five more minutes of this, much less finishes the reading, he has no earthly idea. But he gets to the end of the chapter. His fingers click around the screen on autopilot, but as long as everything gets done and he gets the marks that he deserves, it’s really not important. Barely batting an eyelash, he fills in the, _“Prove you actually paid attention (or at least that you know how to dig around for the right answer)”_ quiz and clicks, _“Submit.”_

As ever, he gets the congratulatory message informing him that he won’t see how he did on the quiz until the next session of class. Technically, results go out right before class, so students can go over the answers they didn’t get and come up with questions to ask.

When Griffin bitched about that back in September, Lt. West arched an eyebrow and pursed his lips. He pushed his glasses up and the lenses caught the light so it flared back at Griffin. Keith thought it looked like Shiro’s boyfriend was trying too hard, but Griffin sat up straighter in his desk and clamped his hands together so tightly that his knuckles went white. In a tone so heavy and even that it must’ve been measured out in perfectly portioned tablespoons, Lt. West said that he personally grades everyone’s quizzes so he can more easily spot the cadets who copy and regurgitate the answers straight out of the textbook without understanding them.

 _“It’s not recognized as plagiarism,”_ he told the class, _“so you aren’t breaking any rules or committing any ethical missteps. But studying like that won’t cut it. If you’re serious about being part of the Galaxy Garrison, then you_ ** _need_** _to understand the material, instead of spitting it back up. This might seem like petty semantics now, but the difference between understanding and rote memorization could save your life, up in deep space.”_

Which sounds fine to Keith. He guesses Adam would know, since he’s flown in deep space before. On missions with Shiro.

Which is great. Amazing. Practically perfect, as Shiro rightfully deserves.

Blinking down at his reflection in the pad’s blank screen, Keith can’t shake himself from thinking about Adam’s face. His stupid, handsome face, which is completely unfair because who stands any kind of chance with him around. His dark, earthy brown skin… Those wide, honey-colored eyes that could ensnare any man who isn’t careful (or who _wants_ to be ensnared)… How he melts around Shiro, never looking at him like he hung the moon and stars, but _seeing_ Shiro in a way most people don’t bother trying for… His lips, plump and probably softer than the breath of spring, whispering things at Shiro, then kissing him on his full on his stupid, beautiful mouth—

Muffling a groan in his knees, Keith shunts the pad down Shiro’s mattress, away from him. It barely avoids toppling off the edge of Shiro’s bed — good thing too, because Keith doesn’t have money for a new one in his budget. Not on a cadet’s salary and not if he wants to save up for his own hoverbike, one that he doesn’t have to borrow from Shiro’s brother because Ryou crashes everything he tries to fly, even in the most remedial video game levels.

God, Keith can’t live like this. He can’t glance up, catch a glimpse of Shiro’s ass while he’s bent over, and bury his own face back in his legs like a moronic, blushing ostrich with an unrequited crush on Takashi Shirogane.

He can’t keep looking over to Shiro, preening and fluffing his hair in the mostly-full-length mirror on inside of his closet door, and hoping like Hell Shiro doesn’t notice, or at least holds off on noticing until Keith remembers how to breathe. He can’t let himself get any ideas about Shiro or Adam. About what they are to each other and what he is to either of them. About what he _could_ be, in some alternate version of his life where he’s everything that Shiro wants and the hot, sick yearning that writhes around his chest will ever amount to more than nausea, pain, and a horrible, guilty, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Thumping his head into the wall might make Keith feel better. It always does. If nothing else, he could give himself a concussion and then he wouldn’t have it in him to think about much of anything.

Great idea in theory, but Kinkade’s spent the past five or six weeks keeping track of when Keith does it in their dorm. To what purpose, Keith doesn’t have a clue. His current personal theory involves Kinkade ratting on him to Shiro. Probably no one else would give a damn, and Griffin’s got at least half their class convinced that Keith is Shiro’s pet or something. They’d relish knowing that Keith is risking self-inflicted brain damage and everything else Kinkade went on about when he admitted that he’d listened in and caught Keith smacking his head around.

Regardless of whether or not anyone should care, Keith catches himself before banging his skull anywhere. No matter what Keith thinks, Shiro _would_ give a damn and Keith doesn’t want to upset him any. Besides, if Keith messed up the wall in here, then Shiro would be the one who got in trouble, since this is his room and he’s responsible for maintaining it.

“Figured out your plans yet?” Still over by the mirror, Shiro smiles when Keith looks over to him. His long, tawny fingers are curled around the silver chain necklace he always wears. Peaceful as he looks, one of his thumbs won’t stop twisting his Mom’s wedding band. “For the summer, I mean. It’s coming up on you pretty quick.”

Keith quirks his shoulders, propping his chin back on his knees. “I’m talking to Iverson after class tomorrow. About summer session courses.”

That’s what Shiro did, when he was a cadet. Spent summer sessions finishing his required coursework early, so he could get on to advanced classes and flying on actual missions, the things he came to the Garrison to do.

It shouldn’t surprise Shiro that yet another cadet wants to follow in his footsteps, but instead of saying something back, he blinks at Keith uncomprehendingly.

“I just…” Why does Keith’s tongue feel like someone glued it to the roof of his mouth and stuffed it full of angry hornets? Why is it doing this to him _now_? Dropping his eyes to the floor helps him spit out, “Seemed like a good idea? Ryou’s writing his thesis, so he might need your place to himself, I thought? And it’ll be nicer around here without Griffin, so…”

Like all lucky people, Griffin doesn’t see how lucky he is, much less appreciate it. He gets to go home to parents who love him and beam with pride about everything they think he’s making of himself at the Garrison. Then, they’ll take him on some expensive vacation so he can spend some several weeks in Belize or Tahiti. They spent winter break visiting family in Costa Rica and Griffin came back with hundreds of selfies to show off at anyone who stood still long enough. Last year, his parents took him to South Africa. Not that Keith’s seen any evidence, but he’d bet his hoverbike savings that Griffin’s parents have a getaway chateau in the Swiss Alps or the Colorado Rockies, somewhere cold and expensive.

Unless he gets arrested (and he’d rather not), Keith only has three options for the summer: one of Plaht City’s shelters for homeless youth; Shiro and Ryou’s place in the desert just outside town, where Keith has his own room with a lock on the door and everything, but where he still feels like an interloper, which will only be worse without Shiro there to buffer between him and Ryou; and the Garrison.

Calling this a choice insults actual decision-making so badly that it’d be well within its rights to demand a sunrise duel with pistols.

“I meant, like, what do you want to do about having fun, Keith.” Shiro’s eyes sparkle with a bad idea. “You could call Katie Holt. Her family doesn’t live that far away. And you two have been pretty friendly since you finished at Stevenson. Relatively speaking, for you — _both_ of you — anyway.…”

The way Shiro trails off begs Keith to respond, to say anything that confirms or denies shit about this situation.

For a long, nerve-grating moment, all Keith manages to do is blush. Ducking his chin, he lets his hair flop over his face as much as it can. Not that it’s a _good_ hiding place, but it gets Keith’s face relatively out of sight.

Shiro chuckles and it sounds like summer rain. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Keith. Katie’s smart as a whip. She’s nice, she’s fun, she’s pretty. I guess she can be a handful? That’s what Ryou and Commander Holt say, but…” He makes a small, throaty sound, the vocal equivalent of a shrug. “I don’t know if you could handle being with somebody boring.”

“I can’t. Or I don’t think I could.” Huffing, Keith smooths out a wrinkle over his shin. “But I dunno, okay? What I’m gonna do or not, or any of it. Katie’s got better things to do than entertain me all summer.”

She’s got parents, though Commander Holt will leave in a few days’ time, leading Shiro and Adam’s big mission to Titan. She’s got her brother, who talks about summer break like he won’t be hanging around for extra classes. She’s got a dog, which Keith almost envies more than the family because dogs only run out on you if you treat them like garbage in the first place. She’s got the Taylor-Keaton Institute of Technology, which is how she knows Shiro’s brother: he’s getting his PhD, Katie started her undergrad classes there last fall, and Ryou’s been her TA for Intro to Computer Science. Probably for other classes, besides, but she hasn’t mentioned them.

Yet, as Shiro sits on the edge of his desk, he keeps smiling as if there’s nothing wrong in the world. Maybe as if he’s teasing, but mostly like he wants to help and really thinks he can. Whatever he thinks the underlying problem is, he might not be completely wrong. But he’ll inevitably miss the mark by a long-shot because the real issue, as ever, is Keith. That’s how it is, how it’s always been, how it always will be. No amount of kind words, sunshine smiles, or pure, unleaded belief can change that. Doesn’t matter how much Shiro wishes otherwise, because he’s dealing with someone broken.

( _“It’s like my mama always used to say,”_ Sister Mary Catherine used to drawl when she thought none of the other orphans or Sisters could hear her do it, tapping two long fingers against her lips like she couldn’t quite forget the motions of smoking cigarettes. Bones and knuckles bulged under her ghastly white skin, perpetually giving her a look like a skeleton had dressed up like a nun for someone’s costume party. And she wasn’t kind, not really — but something about her deep, molasses-slow voice sounded so much like Dad’s as she told Keith, _“‘Wish in one hand. Spit in the other. Tell me which one fills up faster.’”_

Good advice. Best that Keith ever got from any of his old group homes, at least.)

“I’m just saying, Keith: you aren’t chained to the Garrison just because you’re enrolled here. It’s an institution, but it’s not a prison.” Oblivious to Keith’s memories and willfully ignoring all his defects, Shiro watches, waiting for a reaction. When he doesn’t get one, his eyes get all dewy again and it feels like getting kicked in the dick. “If you aren’t getting on that well with the other cadets—”

“I like Ryan okay. Kinkade, I mean. And Garrett and Leifsdottir aren’t too bad. When Garrett isn’t throwing up in the simulator.” As Keith’s bangs droop over his forehead, he can’t summon up enough of a fuck to give, much less enough energy to push or flip them back off his face. “Besides, Garrett’s dating Kinkade, who has _standards_ , so he must be okay.”

“Didn’t think you were the type to keep up with gossip.”

“Didn’t have an option. I walked in on them making out in my and Kinkade’s room.”

Nodding, Shiro cringes and lets out a hiss that could mean about five different things, but refuses to let Keith pin it down entirely. Although he shouldn’t let himself hope for anything and certainly not anything like what he really wants with Shiro, Keith desperately wishes that it’s sympathy gleaming behind his best and only friend’s expression. All the other options that Keith comes up with could all too easily lead to him losing this one point of connection. If Shiro doesn’t realize that he’s hopeless, the way he should’ve done by now, then he’ll probably die in space or something, and Keith will have to live on without this lone person who insistently believes in him.

“Not like I don’t think they should be making out,” Keith’s mouth throws out there for him, lest things get too quiet. Lest Shiro focus enough to see the cracks in Keith that should’ve jumped out at him by now. Rolling the cuff of his sleeve between his fingers, Keith manages to keep his breathing under control. “I just don’t wanna walk in on them when they’re together, y’know? Makes me feel like some kind of perv. ”

“That’s… Oh, yeah, that’s rough. It used to be like that for me and Ollie, when we were still cadets?” Cheeks twinging pink and lips twitching with a guilty smirk, Shiro chuckles. “Before we had our own rooms, I mean. ‘Cause I could walk in on them and Kirk, or they could walk in on me and Adam, or…”

Another cringe spasms across Shiro’s perfect face and Keith swallows thickly, himself.

“I didn’t mean,” Shiro starts. “Not like what happened before, not like—”

“Yeah, no, I didn’t think — I wasn’t even — not for real or—”

“Yeah, I mean, ‘cause you didn’t walk in — it wasn’t like—”

“I had to walk in at one point, though? Like walking into the room? But I guess, so did you and Adam, and—”

“But it wasn’t your fault, you wouldn’t’ve stayed like that if you’d had a—”

“I didn’t _need_ to trust Griffin — I _shouldn’t_ have trusted Griffin, I _know_ that he’s a shit — I was just…” Keith’s entire face flushes so hot it could catch fire. Unable to meet Shiro’s eyes, he ducks his chin. Maybe his hair won’t hide him like he wishes that it would, but it puts enough of a shield between him and Shiro, as if Shiro’s _really_ gonna judge him for this, for any of it. “It’s not a big deal.”

“I think it’s a big deal,” Shiro tells him, more gently than Keith deserves. “If you’re upset, then that’s a big deal to me.”

“Well, not to me. It’s past us, now.”

“If that’s what you want, I guess?”

Nothing about that sounds certain. It sounds like Shiro’s trying to hide a mutilated corpse with sheer sheets of tissue paper. Like he has _something_ on his mind and maybe Keith needs to know it (or maybe not), but for whatever reason, Shiro doesn’t want him to (possibly because it’s none of Keith’s business, though what does he know, really).

Whatever’s on Shiro’s mind, though, he decides to turn toward his desk. He hums while poking around in his drawers. As always, he slips into a soft, lilting tune, dreamy and swoony. Probably made for waltzing, or at least made for a pair of One True Lovers, who were in turn made for each other. Lucky them, having somebody who loves them so much, fictional or not. If Keith ever finds anyone who loves him like that, he might drop dead from shock.

Doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy listening to Shiro, even though Shiro will never love Keith in any way, much less in the way he wants. As Shiro ferrets through his desk, he starts letting the lyrics slip in as well. Papers, charge cords, spare lube and boxes of condoms, they all rattle against the insides of his drawers, sounding like an unholy ruckus, and Shiro’s voice strains around the notes — not because he can’t hit them, but because frustration claws up the inside of his throat while he sings, _“The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam. Yet, I know it’s true…”_

Smart money says the song comes from one of those old cartoon movie fairy tales that made the Walt Disney Company famous. Shiro’s partial to the one based on Charles Perrault’s story about a princess who doesn’t know who she really is and then gets roofied by a spinning wheel.

For no reason Keith’s been able to discern, Shiro loves that movie, and this song probably came from there, unless Keith’s wrong and he might well be. Shiro’s fondness defies so many ways that the universe should work, though, because that movie’s old. It originally came out before his great-grandparents were even together, that’s how much of an antique it is. Surely, Shiro’s pushing some kind of boundary to its breaking point or beyond with how much he adores this practically ancient princess movie.

Keith doesn’t know which boundaries Shiro might push against, exactly. Then again, people would probably move the lines or change the definition of anything for Shiro. Just like he can get away with sponsoring some upstart, no-future fuck-up and getting the Garrison brass to take a chance on Keith when they didn’t want to. Just like how raindrops move aside for him while he’s walking, like Moses with the Red Sea.

Yes, Keith _knows_ how many people call Shiro an, “old soul,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, and whether or not they realize how wrong that accusation is. Maybe Shiro grew up watching _Star Trek_ with his Grandfather and loving those vintage retro ideas of space travel and meeting aliens — but his mind always focuses on the _real_ future, the one that really could happen.

Yes, Keith _knows_ that Shiro’s favorite winter holiday song is some mid-tempo, melancholy, broken-hearted pop ballad that came out over a century before he and Ryou were born. After inviting Keith home with him so Keith wouldn’t need to be alone, Shiro spent winter break turning off any covers of his song that came on the radio and sulking in ways that the Galaxy Garrison’s Golden Boy wouldn’t because those versions were not _his_ “Last Christmas.” They weren’t the _right_ one and therefore weren’t worth playing because, to Shiro’s mind, nothing can rival the original, much less supersede it.

Yes, Keith can’t judge Shiro for his old-fashioned taste in music, since one of his own favorite singers was dead some fifty-four years before Keith’s Dad was born. Keith’s other favorite first graced the Earth with her presence in the aftermath of humanity’s _Second_ World War, not the _Third_ one that wrecked Akira Kogane’s childhood but brought Hikaru Shirogane and Tenō Noshiko closer, so they could eventually have twin boys together.

Borderline antediluvian Disney princess movies, though. Especially the one whose big deal love song makes the Prince sound like a stalker. That’s fucked up, Keith’s pretty certain.

Running his thumb up and down his inseam, he wonders if pulling this particular thread will bring him closer to piecing together Shiro’s game, whatever he thinks it is, whatever he thinks he’s doing. For all Shiro has sworn that he doesn’t have a game to play with Keith, he might yet be up to something. He’s promised that he’d sooner give up on Keith than use him or jerk him around like that, and since he will _never_ give up on Keith, he doesn’t have ulterior motives — but everybody lies. Everybody has secrets. Everybody comes at everything in life with angles in mind or things that they want to get. _Nobody_ is as good a person as Shiro likes to seem.

Above Keith’s head, Shiro clears his throat. He smiles as if nothing’s wrong, looming over the ragamuffin cadet he invited to his room for whatever inscrutable reason that Keith will figure out eventually, no matter what he has to do, so help him, God. Holding something behind his back, Shiro looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, which could mean a lot of things. He could be hiding a knife. Not that he’s supposed to have one, but Keith isn’t supposed to keep _his_ old knife stashed away in his own desk, so Shiro might not mind the rules.

Instead, he pulls out a long, thin, rectangular something, messily cocooned in red paper with a faintly holographic sheen. Little nubbins stick out from one edge, following a pattern but not one that Keith recognizes. Another something protrudes around the middle, its rounded corners straining at the wrapping. The package is light when Shiro slips it into Keith’s hands, grinning like he’s made his intention obvious. Probably, he would’ve done, if he were currently dealing with someone who doesn’t know the laws of the universe, the way that Keith does. When Keith taps at the suspicious lump, he makes out a faintly metallic sound underneath the crinkling of the paper.

“It’s really not much,” Shiro tells him, brushing his fluffy forelock away from his face. “But… I got you something—”

“It’s April. Not Christmas. Or my birthday, either.” Still, Keith runs his fingertips down the nubbins, scrapes his touch over a series of gentle ridges, paired together and punctuated by spaces big enough for Keith to insert a fingertip. He could try to puzzle out what he’s dealing with — but for now, he furrows his brow at Shiro. “And most people don’t give out presents for Easter, do they?”

That’s coming up this Sunday, not that it matters to Keith when he’s gonna be alone. Not that he has room to complain, though.

Shiro shrugs. “I just wanted to give you something? Like, something to keep you busy while I’m gone—”

“You’re spending a long weekend in Seattle. Meeting Adam’s parents for Passover, right? It’s not a big deal—”

“I mean when I’m gone to Titan, Keith. Six months seems like a pretty big deal.” Giving him a sad smile, Shiro whispers, “Open it? Please?”

For all he realizes Shiro could be playing him, Keith nods and drops his legs. He goes slowly and carefully about peeling up the package’s stripes of scotch tape, about opening Shiro’s gift up like a nut. When he’s done and the paper’s splayed out in his lap, Keith gasps. He only hopes Shiro didn’t hear him, but too likely, he won’t get that wish.

He can’t help it, though, blinking down at what Shiro’s presented him with: a black, spiral-bound sketchbook with two vaguely oblong metallic case taped to the center, one painted a particularly vibrant violet and the other painted candy apple red.

Cracking the cases open, Keith finds two white erasers and collections of expensive-looking pencils. One set comes with a mix of colors. The others are different shades of black and gray with labels embossed on their sides, indicating their differing levels of hardness and how dark their graphites are. Keith wrinkles his nose as he drags a fingertip down the monochrome pencils, clicking their edges against each other.

Scratching at the back of his neck, Shiro explains, “I thought it might, y’know, help? Give you something to do with yourself, uh… Something to give yourself a break? From working as hard as you do, I mean? I noticed how you doodle all over the notes you take in class—”

“You didn’t have to do this for me, though?” Keith blinks up at the guy who’s become his best — his _only_ — friend as though this might spell out exactly what Shiro thinks is going on here. As though Keith might puzzle out what Shiro thinks he’s doing in a way he understands. “And I don’t really know how to draw anything?”

“I didn’t know how to cook before Ojiisan taught me. You can learn. Or do whatever you want.” When Keith frowns, Shiro quirks his shoulders. “Drawing could be a good outlet for some of your feelings. Forget about anybody else’s rules and do what _you_ want, okay? It’s _your_ sketchbook, now. Let yourself fill those pages with whatever feels right.”

Keith’s breath hitches in his throat, and he nods instead of arguing. If Shiro wants to do something nice for Keith, then Keith’s in no position to argue. Not until he has actual evidence that Shiro’s playing him for a sap.

Back in his own room after dinner, Keith sets up at his desk. Kinkade’s with Garrett in the library, just like Shiro went off with Adam, so Keith clicks around a Garrison directory on his data-pad until he finds the portrait he wants, waiting for him among the other TAs and junior officers. For a moment, Keith stares at it, wonders if he shouldn’t go for something else instead.

True, Shiro almost looks like someone else in his picture. He’s too put-together, with his hair shellacked into position and not a single wrinkle or misplaced button on his person. Sitting in a rigid position that desperately wants to look casual and easy, he forces a small, illegible smile that’s worlds apart from his awkward grins and the aching, earnest way he beams at Keith even though Keith’s done nothing to deserve it ever in his life.

Still, he’s Shiro, the most beautiful person Keith has ever met. Even his overly posed headshot makes Keith feel hollowed out and hungry, makes his ribs clench up around his lungs. His whole chest throbs with each sick, heavy beat of his heart, each reminder of how hopelessly in love he is shocking and twisting through his insides, making his head spins until he wants to vomit up his soul, as if that would fix anything about the giant perpetual mess that’s been Keith’s life ever since Dad ran back into that fire.

Seeing as nothing’s ever gonna fix that, Keith might as well do what _feels right_ , to him. Might as well start with the most pressing of his interests, the one above all others that perpetually refuses to leave him alone.

What better way to inaugurate this sketchbook than by trying to draw Shiro.


	2. Chapter 2

“Fuckhead, you are one of my most favorite people in the world and you know that I adore you—”

“Gorgeous, please cut the conversational foreplay and get to what you really wanna tell me—”

“But this is the worst idea you have ever had this week.”

“Says you.” Vaguely, Shiro wishes that he still wore glasses, like Ryou, Adam, and Yuki do. Glancing at the last of them might feel so much more effective if Shiro could shoot him a withering look over the rims of a set of black plastic frames that make him look smarter than he is. “I say that I’ve thought about this in detail already. I’ve considered all kinds of possibilities—”

“That just makes it _worse_ , though!” Yuki winces at nothing in particular, then buries his face in his palm. Struggling to keep his breathing even, he grinds his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his usually adorable button-nose. “Do you not understand how thinking about this stupidity is just…? It’s like you _know_ how this could all go wrong, and you are making an active choice _against_ caring—”

“I _care_ about how it could go wrong. I _care_ about all the bad things that could happen, I just…”

Shiro inhales deeply as he crouches by Yuki’s lower oven. He doesn’t _need_ to peer at the loaves of banana bread. They definitely haven’t been in for long enough to bother checking, and it’s a similar story with the chicken baking in the top oven.

Yet, Shiro can clear his thoughts more easily, looking at what he’s cooking instead of looking at his Yuki. His deep breaths count for so much more, or that’s what it feels like. Each time he inhales, it’s as if Shiro’s somehow getting more oxygen into his lungs. Or as if someone’s filled Yuki’s apartment up with aerated alprazolam, except if that were actually possible and if someone had actually done it, then inhaling gaseous doses of that particular benzo would probably knock Shiro clean out — and nobody wants that.

Still, he won’t argue with managing to calm himself down, however that needs to happen. Dimly, as he combs one hand back through his hair and tugs on it ever-so-gently, Shiro wonders if there are any sapient aliens out there in the broader universe, who might have an actual word for what he and Yuki are to each other. Not that this is even remotely the point right now, but it might’ve helped last weekend, when he called while Shiro was up in Seattle, meeting Adam’s parents.

Dr. West and Professor Kohen-West already have enough reservations about their son dating a Gentile. Seeing another young man’s name come up on Shiro’s phone made Professor Kohen-West purse her lips and arch one of her thick, immaculately manicured black eyebrows. She cleared her throat as if she had something she wanted Shiro to intuit without her needing to say anything. In a tone laced with poisonous significance, Dr. West asked if Shiro meant to answer that call — but when he and Yuki had wrapped things up, when he slunk inside, leaving the Wests’ backyard and returning to the living room, Dr. West huffed, gently thwapped the backs of his fingers into Adam’s bicep, and said something in Hebrew.

 _“He was saying that you clearly don’t understand manners or proper decorum,”_ Adam explained later, when he and Shiro went to bed. _“Never mind that he’s… Just? Don’t worry about it, Takashi. He’s being an overbearing idiot. He and Mom_ ** _want_** _to see the worst in you — but I know what’s real, okay?”_

Which sure sounded like a great approach, in theory — but it didn’t offer that much practical help, when Yuki texted the next morning. If not for Adam’s mother looking over Shiro’s shoulder at his phone, things might have been alright. Shiro could have texted Yuki back and everyone could have gone on with their lives.

Boundaries, however, ceased to exist on the Wests’ doorstep. Crossing the threshold into their home meant signing up for sneering, judgment, snide remarks, periodic interrogations about his and Adam’s sex life as though that were any of his parents’ business, somewhat more frequent questions about whether or not Shiro felt anything in particular about Adam _“letting himself go”_ and putting on a not-inconsiderable amount of weight since they started dating, and all manner of other invasive garbage that Shiro couldn’t call for what it was, not without summoning an unholy amount of trouble on Adam’s head.

Or, in this particular instance, it meant that Professor Natalie Kohen-West felt like she had every right to spy on her son’s boyfriend’s text messages because Shiro happened to get one while sitting at _her_ kitchen table.

Humming pensively, she helped herself to a mug of coffee and sat down opposite him and Adam. With a _Pointed, Significant Look_ that threatened to have Shiro murdered if he dared to cheat on her firstborn or lie about it, Professor Kohen-West drawled that Shiro certainly was talking to this _Yuki_ person a fair amount. Moreover, she thought Shiro’s brother was called _Ryou_ , not _Yuki_ — which Shiro might’ve minded less, had she flat-out asked who Yuki was to him, instead of trailing off, pointing her loaded significance at Shiro like the world’s worst game of Russian Roulette.

 _“Really nice of you to assume that he’s my family just because his name is Japanese,”_ Shiro didn’t let himself say, no matter how much he wanted to point out what should’ve jumped out at a sociology professor as Probably Not An Okay Assumption, Really, Because It Seems Kinda Racist. _“I mean, come on, it’s not like there are that many people of East Asian descent living in or around Plaht City. An even smaller percentage of us are queer. God forbid I have_ ** _any_** _kind of relationship with another guy who gets what it’s like, being gay_ ** _and_** _Japanese-American.”_

As satisfying as it might’ve been to call her out, though, Shiro would’ve definitely dragged Adam into a world of hurt that he didn’t deserve to be in. All he’d wanted was for this Pesach visit home to go halfway decently, which was the best he thought to hope for, in light of how his parents wanted any excuse to dislike his boyfriend. God, Adam deserved so much better than that.

He _still_ deserves so much better and if Shiro were half the man who Adam thinks he is, he would’ve come up with some perfect summary of his and Yuki’s relationship, one that left no room for thinking that Shiro would ever cheat on Adam but also didn’t compromise on any of the aspects of _Shiro-and-Yuki_ that periodically give people trouble.

But at that moment right then, with Professor Kohen-West narrowing her hazel eyes, Shiro could only come up with an explanation the made him want to vomit in the sink: _“Yuki’s a close friend of mine, not a member of the Garrison. He’s a journalist, he lives in Plaht City. We’ve been friends for almost four years — he’s met Adam, actually, and they get on great, and Yuki likes us together? But no, he’s not family to me? Just my, I mean? If you really want to put a word on it, then I guess you’d call him my best friend?”_

Vaguely, Shiro’s glad that no one asked him to define what that phrase meant to him. Had he kept babbling for too much longer, he no doubt would have mentioned Keith. Once that name was on the table, he’d have needed to explain his and Keith’s relationship to Adam’s family — and that sounds like one of the worst personal Hells that could ever ensnare Shiro. While Adam’s siblings likely would’ve understood that Shiro’s officially a kind of mentor to Keith but also sees him as a friend, Dr. West and Professor Kohen-West probably would have found some way to misconstrue Shiro and Keith’s friendship into something sinister and nefarious.

As it stood, Shiro was in hot enough water for calling Yuki his, _“best friend”_ without mentioning how they’ve slept together semi-regularly for the past three-and-a-half years, because that stopped when Shiro started dating Adam. He left out the fact that Adam and Yuki conspired to proposition Shiro with a threesome for his birthday back in February, or that it was not the first, last, and only time the three of them did that. Shiro didn’t mention a whisper of how he and Yuki first found each other at Scandals, one of the queer bars in Plaht City, on the tenth anniversary of Shiro’s parents’ deaths, because he was eighteen, and miserable, and he wanted to get fucked until he couldn’t feel anything but Yuki’s cock moving inside him, Yuki’s hips and belly grinding down on his abs, and Yuki’s mouth showering him in kisses.

Somehow, Shiro’s pretty sure that Adam’s parents would find some way to call that cheating, even though Shiro and Adam weren’t together, at the time. Shiro even left out the personal endearment that Yuki uses for him, just in case Adam’s parents took exception to their son’s Gentile boyfriend accepting a nickname like, _“Fuckhead.”_

Morbid curiosity notwithstanding, he doesn’t want to know if they’d understand that how he feels about Yuki has never been romantic. It was bad enough, sitting opposite Adam’s mother, squirming in his seat as Professor Kohen-West narrowed her eyes like she wanted to crack Shiro open like a pomegranate and send his soul spilling out in torrents all over her kitchen table because the Gentile dating her son had the audacity to call another guy his best friend.

 _“If he’s really your best friend,”_ she prodded with a not-quite-sneer, _“then why would you be stammering or ashamed of that?”_

 _“Because Takashi isn’t_ ** _used_** _to having_ ** _any_** _friends, okay?”_ Adam’s hand smacked the kitchen table hard enough to rattle everyone’s plates and silverware. _“Before he came to the Garrison, he really only had his brother. He_ ** _still_** _doesn’t have a lot of close relationships, and most of them aren’t friends, they’re_ ** _family_** _. So, thanks for shoving his face in that, Mom. Thanks for assuming him guilty until proven innocent, just because one of his friends is another guy.”_

 _“Also, I’m gonna point out? ‘Yuki’ could’ve been a girl’s name.”_ Resting her cheek in her palm, Gal, the eldest of the three West sisters, looked to Shiro for confirmation that she had that right. When she got a nod, she went on, _“And that wouldn’t’ve been an issue, ‘cause Takashi’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s gayer than Adam—”_

 _“Thanks a lot, little sister.”_ Adam rolled his eyes, but shot her an affectionate smirk. _“Love you, too.”_

 _“So, like, honestly, Mom,”_ Gal pressed on, as though she didn’t hear him. _“What happened here is? You were looking at a text that wasn’t yours to look at, and assuming the worst of somebody you basically just met. And Chris could speak to this more than I could, but I’m pretty sure the Tanakh and the Talmud have some verses about_ ** _not_** _doing that.”_

Yuki’s done his best to avoid laughing at any tales from Shiro’s trip to meet his boyfriend’s parents — but now, he finally gives up trying to restrain himself. Slumped against his kitchen counter, he hides his mouth behind his palm. Doesn’t keep his giggle-fit from coming through, loud and clear as Shiro pushes himself up off the floor, stretches out, and turns to the motley assortment of ingredients he’s laid out on Yuki’s counter.

“It really wasn’t _that_ funny, Gorgeous.” Humming, Shiro prods at the data-pad where he keeps his collection of recipes. Nothing on tonight’s agenda strikes him as particularly complicated, just an excuse to make Yuki a nice meal and some of his favorites before going away for six months. As Shiro slides through one file, searching for Ojiisan’s recipe for shiitake udon, Shiro huffs. “Honestly, after last weekend? I completely understand why Adam never goes home unless he absolutely can’t get out of it.”

Shiro also understands why Adam’s been so loath to discuss his reasons for going home as little as possible. If Shiro’s parents did that — if they were alive to torment him, Ryou, or their significant others and they went in hard like that — then Shiro wouldn’t want to go home, either.

Yet, Yuki shakes his head and insists that he’s not laughing because of anything about what happened in Seattle. “Your boyfriend’s family situation is unquestionably, objectively shitty. No two ways about it, and I’m with you on that—”

“I wouldn’t call it that, _exactly_?”

“Because you don’t cuss unless it’s gonna kill you not to.”

“I cuss when I think the situation warrants it. Which I don’t, right now.” But the throaty, discontented sound that Shiro lets slip probably undermines this claim. “I’d call Adam’s parents’ behaviors repressive, overly strict, and seriously uncomfortable for me to endure, as someone who loves Adam, because he and his siblings deserve so much better from their Mom and Dad. I don’t even _have_ parents — not ones who are alive, anyway — and I can see that.”

“Which is all an unflappably polite, uniquely Fuckhead Shirogane way of saying that Adam’s parents are _shitty_ —”

“As you like, I guess—”

“What’s giving me the issue here? The thing that I _cannot_ get over?” Another round of laughter bursts out of him, and Yuki braces himself against the counter rather than try to hide it. A few shocks of deep breathing help him rein it in, but mirth bubbles underneath his voice as he clarifies, “I just _can’t_ with how one of Adam’s Nice Jewish Brothers? Is named fucking _‘Chris.’_ ”

As much as Shiro wants to, he doesn’t roll his eyes. “He was named after Christopher Reeves.”

“ _Still._ ‘Christ’ is literally part of the name, and he’s _Jewish_ —”

“Yeah. Because Adam’s parents are huge fans of vintage DC Comics and their adaptations.” Setting up the oversized pot of water on Yuki’s stove, getting ready to make enough soup that he’ll have some leftovers for a while, Shiro huffs. “I mean, come on, they named their firstborn, ‘Adam _Bruce_ West.’ Like Batman. Chris’s middle name is Clark as in, ‘Clark Kent.’ Gal’s middle name is Diana, because of Wonder Woman—”

“Didn’t the little one end up with some truly ridiculous name?”

“Well, I think, ‘Harley Margot West’ sounds sweet?” Yet, after a moment of consideration, Shiro adds on, “Y’know, until you hear who she was named after and just _really_ need to wonder if Dr. West and Professor Kohen-West hate every single one of their children.”

“Based on what you and Sunshine have said? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.”

“Neither would I, that’s the worst part of all this. I could live with having to skimp in explaining the nuances of our relationship—”

“Obviously, considering how long it took your grandmother to get that we were never dating in the first place—”

“You have to know how to talk to her, is all. Obaasan always heard what she wanted to hear—”

“Oh, hey, is _that_ where you learned it from, then?”

“I listen to people. Not just to hear what makes me happy — _or_ whatever you’re getting at—”

“I’m getting at saying that you’re headstrong, argumentative even when you pretend it isn’t true, perpetually difficult but in an endearing sort of way, and basically my favorite stubborn jackass. And I’m sorry that your boyfriend’s parents were a pair of nightmares—”

“Anticipating a, _‘but’_ here, Gorgeous.” Shiro forces a casual hum, hoping that it sounds like Yuki hasn’t managed to ruffle him — but even Shiro can tell that he doesn’t hit the right notes to make it work. Although the water hasn’t started boiling, he follows Ojiisan’s old advice to add the vegetables early. As he cuts up scallions and lets them fall into the pot, he swallows thickly, paws through his brain for the words he wants, and— “Not that I mind waiting for it? I just wish you’d respect us both and cut to it already.”

Huffing gently, Yuki shrugs. “But I want to divert back to the talk you don’t want to have—”

Shiro groans, but doesn’t let himself say anything.

“Alright, see, getting that kind of reaction from you, Fuckhead? It gets my protective hackles up.”

Quirking an eyebrow so sharply that it almost leaps off his forehead, Yuki folds meaty arms over his broad, soft chest. He tilts his head so the overhead lights reflect off his lenses, then ducks his pudgy chin so there’s no glare left and nowhere for Shiro can hide. Not unless he wants to look away from Yuki, which he doesn’t. Given how much better Yuki deserves from him than that — given Yuki’s insistence that his Fuckhead deserves better from himself as well — Shiro can’t allow himself to disrespect both of them by looking way. He just…

Shiro needs a moment.

He just needs to focus on something other than Yuki for a second. Just until he’s breathing right.

Fresh shiitake mushrooms rustle in protest as Shiro slices through them. A stray bubble pops down in the pot, then another, but the water’s still heating up. When he dumps in the stems and trimmings, Shiro barely makes a splash. Nothing much worth seeing, so Shiro shouldn’t have reason to keep his gaze aimed here for too long. But right as his deep breaths start to feel like they’re getting somewhere with his inflamed nerves—

“Getting the silent treatment out of you,” Yuki prods with an upward inflection that they both know he doesn’t mean. “You going all quiet on me? That _really_ makes me think that you don’t wanna talk about anything like we were saying—”

“Maybe because I _don’t_?” Rolling his eyes, Shiro drags his head back up. Makes himself frown at Yuki instead of at the future-soup. He only looks away because he needs to peel the ginger, then slice it, and he has no desire to end up in the ER with a hacked-off finger. “Maybe because I’ve thought about this, like I told you, and I don’t think there’s anything that _needs_ discussing?”

“Yeah, but you hate talking about yourself or any problems that you might be having—”

“I don’t like it when people claim that I have _problems_ —”

“Far be it from me to tell you how you feel, Fuckhead.” Yuki holds up three fingers, like the salute he used to do, once upon a time in Scouts. Now, though, he’s only asking for Shiro to hear him out. “Humor me for a second. _How_ long have you known Adam?”

“Since Tuesday, September second, 2104.” Chopping with practiced ease, Shiro dices his hunks of ginger up into even smaller pieces. He splays them out on Yuki’s cutting board like a scattering of pale, orange-yellow stars. “We were sixteen. Cute, but stupid, especially me—”

“How many years, though? Put a number on it—”

“You know all your basic arithmetic, Gorgeous—”

“Damn right, I do. I just wanna make you do the math so you can hear yourself say it.”

Shiro’s reaching for the wax paper, ready to cover the ginger galaxy so he can properly mash and crush it. But before he gets to it, he drops his hand. Taps his fingertips into Yuki’s counter, being careful not to get too close to the knives. Yuki’s request is too simple for Shiro to feel good about ignoring it or focusing on anything else. Besides, Yuki has a point about how much it benefits his Fuckhead to break his problems down in systems, to work through whatever issue he’s currently facing in some fashion where he can’t deny the facts and can’t allow himself to hide from whatever aspects inconvenience him the most.

Holding his breath, Shiro taps off a few numbers on his fingers. He keeps a prayer of gratitude to himself, but… It does mean a lot, the fact that Shiro has _somewhere_ he can do this, _someone_ who won’t throw a sidelong, judgmental glance his way because he needs something tactile to keep himself grounded while running numbers in his head. The Galaxy Garrison’s Golden Boy probably never needed to count on his fingers. He was probably born knowing how to count all the way to seven-billion, add, subtract, multiply, divide, recite squared and cubed numbers up to a thousand, rattle off the exact value of Pi to the four-hundred-and-fiftieth digit, and compute binomials with perfect accuracy.

Lt. Takashi “Fuckhead” Shirogane, on the other hand, is twenty-two-years-old and still hooks his fingers up in each other when he doesn’t feel secure in his mental mathematics.

“Five years, seven months, and eight days with Adam. It’ll be six years, this September.” Before Yuki can think to ask, Shiro adds, “We’ve been dating for two years, four months, and sixteen days. Or two years, five months, five days, if you count from him dragging me out of Scandals, yelling at some guy that I was young enough to be his son, pushing me up against a wall, and putting his tongue in my mouth.”

“I’ll count that from whenever you and Sunshine want to count it.” Eyeing Shiro closely but with no obvious intention behind it, Yuki needles, “And I know you haven’t known that Kogane kid even half that long—”

“Because I haven’t even known Keith for a _year_ , yet—”

“Which is all fine and dandy, but—”

“Do you really think there’s a case getting made here? Considering that Commander Holt only knows I’m sick because Uncle Mitch told him? And if that hadn’t happened, he’d only know because Flight Command knows, and he’d need to know before any missions—”

“Well, _you’re_ the one who’s bringing Commander Holt into anything at all—”

“All I mean is?” Shiro sighs. He braces himself, grinding his palms against the edge of Yuki’s counter. For all he should look Yuki in the eye, Shiro lets himself hang his head and shut his eyes. “There’s no issue of trust here, okay? Not for me. I trust Adam. And I trust Keith. He got there sooner than most people do because he’s upfront and honest in ways most people aren’t. But the two trusts here aren’t mutually exclusive or anything, so…?”

“Very enlightening, Fuckhead. In ways that _you_ usually avoid. Still not what I meant, though.”

“Alright, fine. What you really mean to get at _is_ …?”

Letting out a deep, weary sigh, Yuki drums his fingers along his elbow. “You trust Keith and Adam. I don’t care which one you trusted sooner because I don’t see any issues with you taking longer to warm up to Adam—”

“The fact that I ever did warm up to him is… Well, it sure is something.”

“My point exactly. Besides, Keith’s got his heart on his sleeve and Adam can, by his own admission, be squirrelly with his feelings. Worse, he does the same damn thing that you do where your head is exploding, your lungs want to come up through your throat, somebody’s spreading a zombie plague, and everything’s on fire…”

Yuki’s deep inhale would seem pointedly significant, if not for the desperate gleam in his eyes like, _Oh, shit, right, breathing isn’t optional_.

When he’s recovered and caught his breath sufficiently, Yuki pushes his glasses up. “But, y’know, the vintage sci-if channel is having a marathon of _Deep Space Nine_ , and most of the scheduled episodes are really heavy on Garak and Dr. Bashir, so if you consider the facts in aggregate, everything is fine.”

“Given his parents, though?” Shiro could shut up. He could’ve never raised this complaint in the first place because there’s nothing worth objecting to. Yuki is not attacking Adam, or really even criticizing him. Yet, in unnecessary defense of his boyfriend, Shiro still insists, “I mean, Adam probably had to learn behaviors like that in order to make it out alive.”

“Most likely, yeah, but not exactly relevant, right now.” With a throaty noise like he’s refusing to let himself sigh again, Yuki shakes his head. “Fuckhead, you don’t need to prove that you trust your boyfriend or your Keith. Not to me, anyway. But you’re going on a six-month mission, and the only other person on the crew who knows you’ve got MS—”

“Is Commander Holt.” Shiro ducks his chin, stares down at the cacophony of bubbles cropping up all over the pot. “Who only knows because once upon a time, Obaasan pulled strings to get me a weeklong campus visit. As if letting me have a taste of life at the Garrison would talk me out of applying—”

“Again, your decision-making skills seem uniquely inherited. Or enculturated, maybe—”

“And since they’re friends as well as colleagues, Uncle Mitch asked Commander Holt if I could sit in on one of his classes. He agreed, but he still asked Uncle Mitch what was going on. Not that I regret him doing that, in retrospect. Or the part where Uncle Mitch explained things, it was only fair for Commander Holt to know, but…”

Yuki waits for Shiro to finish up that thought. Fair enough, and more polite than most people get out of Yuki. Except Shiro’s vocabulary has evaporated and left him grasping helplessly at an empty space between his ears. He has no idea what to put in where he trailed off. Dragging his hand through his hair might help — but Shiro has the remnants of vegetables on his fingers, juices and shavings and things that don’t belong in his hair. Anyway, he needs to handle other ingredients, once the broth is going strong.

So, whatever Yuki’s waiting for — however much he expects Shiro to come up with some truly brilliant explanation of what he’s feeling and how he’s making sense of anything — all Shiro gives him is a shrug. Thankfully, he doesn’t sigh and make himself feel like a human teapot. He keeps himself together enough that he finally makes it back to crushing his ginger. For a brief moment, he breathes more easily and lets himself believe that Yuki might drop the subject.

Instead, Yuki prods with, “The fact that it’s fair for Commander Holt to know about you being sick before letting you sit in on his classes? Doesn’t negate how you didn’t get a choice in telling him or not.”

“Maybe not. But it’s not like I’m sitting over here, mad about it.”

“Maybe you should be, though. For one thing, I’m not sure I believe you, but—”

“But I’m _not_ mad about it, so I don’t know what you don’t want to let yourself believe—”

“Mostly, I’m hung up on the part where denying your anger like you do won’t magically will it into non-existence.” Arching an eyebrow, Yuki silently dares Shiro to challenge this assertion and/or prove him wrong. “As I was saying, even if you _aren’t_ angry about this recurring pattern in your life? Maybe you should be. Maybe you deserve to be mad about it.”

Scraping the ginger into the pot, Shiro barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes. “I don’t see the point in getting mad about a bunch of circumstances that no one could’ve helped, not really.”

“I mean, let’s consider all the people who know you’re sick. The ones who matter most to you, not your doctors or the Garrison higher-ups you don’t care about.” Yuki holds up a finger. “Ryou was literally in the room with you when you were diagnosed, right?”

Shiro nods. “He was in the room when I had to get a lumbar puncture, too. He’d’ve been there for my MRI, if they’d let him.”

Another finger pops up. “Ojiisan was also in the room?” When Shiro nods, Yuki holds up a third finger, and keeps counting like this as he plows through the other names. “Obaasan’s dead. So are your parents—”

“They weren’t even on _Earth_ for that. They didn’t get back home for _weeks_ —”

Yuki starts counting on his other hand. “Aunt Satomi, Aunt Naoko, and your godfather all found out because your grandparents told them. Uncle Mitch’s husband found out from his man, so did Commander Holt and—” He restarts on the count on his first hand. “It’s the same story for Admiral Sanda, right?”

“She didn’t… It wasn’t like anyone deliberately told her or anything? Plus, I was actually there for it.” For want of something to do while the water boils, Shiro rinses his hands off in the sink. “She overheard me and Uncle Mitch talking in his office. And she actually took it pretty… I don’t know what to call it, but she gave me pointers on applying, so?”

Strictly speaking, Yuki might not agree with that assessment, when Admiral Sanda’s help mostly revolved around how much harder Shiro would need to work to prove that he could handle life and expectations at the Garrison. Yuki might hear a story like that and conclude that Admiral Sanda didn’t want Shiro at the Garrison in the first place. He might hear nothing but trouble in her advice to not only meet the minimum adjusted requirements, but to exceed them, to work as hard as possible to show up all of the applicants, cadets, and officers who don’t have multiple sclerosis or any other chronic illnesses. This, to Yuki, might constitute some of the worst advice that Shiro could have gotten from anyone.

But for now, Shiro leans against the counter beside his… whatever they are to each other. His person who matters like, _“Someday, Shiro might have a word without needing to cop out by saying that their relationship is complicated and hoping for the best.”_

He nudges his shoulder into Yuki’s and nearly manages to smile. “Then there’s you—”

“Yes, well, I was getting around to myself—”

“Gorgeous, you’re amazing,” Shiro says, because he can’t bring himself to say, _I love you_ , not tonight. Not when he could scare Yuki off of putting up with him right before leaving Earth for six months and a little over. “But I will scream bloody murder if you still feel guilty about that.”

“It’s not that I feel _guilty_ , per se? Not anymore, at least.” Blissfully oblivious, Yuki rewards Shiro with a gentle shoulder-bump and a small, fond smile. His face lights up without insisting upon anything too strenuously, and seeing this warms Shiro’s heart because this is a truly special privilege. “But how I found out gives me some perspective on your current predicament.”

“Maybe it would if there were a predicament.” Hugging himself, Shiro chokes down a sigh. “I left my meds out on your kitchen table while making breakfast. If Adam wants to look anything up while we’re in space, he’ll have to actively dig through my personal effects and rations. Find the information packets that they’re legally obligated to put with my meds. And as for Keith…”

Shiro’s breath hitches in his throat, and he doesn’t know why.

In all likelihood, it’s something to do with how few friends he’s had in his life. Excluding Ryou, Keith is the only friend so far who Shiro hasn’t slept with. Aside from that, Keith’s had such a rough life. So many people have given up on him, or made promises to him that they never meant to keep, or otherwise let him down. So many people have walked out on him and he hasn’t found his social niche with the other cadets yet, unless you count being the ostensible loner who most of his classmates hate and don’t want to deal with.

“I guess I feel guilty for cutting him out of the loop like this?” Shiro digs his messy fingertips into his elbow, silently relieved that he doesn’t need to wear long sleeves around Yuki because he knows about Shiro’s electro-stimulator bracelets. “Practically no one else trusts Keith, or likes him, or sees him as anything but trouble. And it feels like a betrayal, not telling him, but…?”

“But… you can’t handle telling him and Adam?” Yuki rubs his bicep against Shiro’s. “Not until after the mission?”

“Selfish, maybe it is? But…” Shiro shakes his head. “Last thing I need right now, is giving them an actual reason to worry about me.”

Which Shiro’s illness certainly, undeniably would be. No two ways about that, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.

Before Yuki can decide on a response to that, the top oven’s timer beeps. While Shiro gets in there to flip the chicken breasts, he tacks on, “Anyway, this is my longest run without any symptoms in… years, basically? Not even just _major_ symptoms, but _any_ symptoms. And that isn’t going to last, I realize, because exacerbations always come back to get me, but at the same time?”

Setting the timer again, Shiro smiles at his reflection in the oven door. “My specialist is hopeful. Like, we might’ve finally found the right mix of treatments. Maybe we’ve got this handled as well as possible. Maybe everything will be okay.”

“For your sake, Fuckhead? I damn sure hope so.” Which could be well enough to leave alone. Yet, as Shiro fills another pot with water so he can get the udon noodles cooked, Yuki throws a sympathetic, anxious frown his way. “Not that I’m saying this is necessary or anything, because it isn’t? But did you ever think about, I don’t know, looking into a cure? Like, for everything?”

Lips pursed so tightly that they almost disappear, Shiro gives him a noncommittal hum.

“Again, I’m not saying that you _need_ anything like that, or that being sick should stop you from following your dreams or doing anything you want, but?” Yuki wrinkles his nose, twitches it like a concerned bunny. “One of my work-friends who reports on medical stuff? She was talking the other day about some shiny new medical research into post-World War Three cases of multiple sclerosis. You’ve got historians and scientists working together, investigating how humanity’s biological warfare might’ve affected how cases of your illness present, and some experimental studies about reversing that poisoning—”

“Interesting theory. But since World War Three ended twenty-three years before I was born—”

“It still could’ve had an effect on you. Well, like, on the sperm and egg that became you and Ryou—”

“Yeah, just like how living next-door to a witch could make somebody’s great-grandchildren come out looking like werewolves with fully functional polydactyly.” Ignoring the chill seeping into the pit of his chest, Shiro snorts and rolls his eyes. “Honestly, Gorgeous. Are we taking medical advice from the _Malleus Maleficarum_ now, or what?”

“Awful lotta skepticism from the guy who does regular devotionals to Saint Sebastian and Benzaiten.” Getting an unimpressed glance only makes Yuki shrug. “Look, I’ll grant you that we still don’t understand a _lot_ about all the environmental factors that affect how different genetic conditions present for different people. But _you’re_ the one who first told me that World War Three had an effect on the frequency of MS and how it—”

“Because that much has been pretty conclusively proven. Beyond a reasonable scientific doubt. Even if we don’t completely understand—”

“Fuckhead — no, _Kashi_. Please, hear me out about this. I promise: I am not judging you. However you answer, I won’t condemn you.”

Lowering his glasses so the light can’t glare off their lenses so easily, Yuki shoots Shiro a look so earnest, it makes his lungs writhe in pain. Using that personal nickname would’ve been enough to get through to Shiro. Staring at Shiro like this ought to be unnecessary and Yuki shouldn’t need to talk to him like he’s dealing with a panicked animal. But it makes Shiro freeze in place and nod his willingness to listen, which is probably what Yuki wanted.

“All I mean to say is?” Shrugging, Yuki heaves the most exhausted sigh that he’s let out tonight. “You don’t let your illness hold you back. You work your ass off all the time, and that’s admirable. But you also don’t want to miss any opportunities, right? So, if there’s some kind of hope out there, some _potential_ cure or anything that could let you live without this, I just…” He looks like he could cry as he says, “I don’t know why you wouldn’t take that chance.”

“Because I know those cures are junk science.” Shiro chokes down a sigh of relief as the oven calls on him to rescue the banana bread. “Worse, they’re all _ableist_ junk science. A century ago, you had people suggesting that vaccines caused autism and that mercury chelation therapy could make kids like Keith turn perfectly neurotypical. These days, you’ve got people saying that actually, the link between contemporary MS and World War Three is some kinda science-magic poisoning that we need to have cured.”

He knocks his knee into the lower oven’s door to close it. “Why address any of the underlying societal problems of accessibility, or equitable treatment, or systematically devaluing people like me and Obaasan’s late brother when you could just try to make us _normal_?”

Not that Shiro doesn’t believe the points he’s parroting, because he does.

Still, as he checks the udon noodles and adds butter to the broth, he’s glad that Yuki doesn’t press the issue. Only 36 hours remain before the Titan mission launches, and Shiro doesn’t want to waste a second on discussions that he knows too well are nothing short of pointless. He has even less desire to lie by omission to one of the only people in the universe who actually likes him, pretending that he’s never considered anything that Yuki’s suggesting, faking that he’s never considered trying to have his MS cured.

But that’s entirely why Shiro knows that such junk science doesn’t work. It’s why he understands the truth of Uncle Masao’s warning that fighting his MS will only make it so much worse. Since Shiro can’t fix his illness, the only option is enduring.

The only consolation he can offer Yuki is promising, “I’m gonna tell Keith and Adam the truth once we get back from Saturn. As soon as the mission’s over, I’ll tell them everything they want to know. Nothing short of divine intervention will stop me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring Wham!’s “[Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgZ7gMze7A)” and Dolly Parton’s “[Jolene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixrje2rXLMA),” because…… well. Mostly because I felt like it.

Friday, eleventh April, 2110, and first thing in the morning, Keith wants to punch his alarm clock.

By the time it blares the hour at him, shrieking that it’s time to rise and shine, Keith’s already spent seventeen minutes staring at its bright red digital numbers as they ticked away like minutes until an execution. Before that, he spent a good ten minutes staring at pretty much everything _but_ the insides of his eyelids. Keith’s zeroed in on the ceiling’s minute details, all the barely-there paint bubbles on the walls, and the irritatingly flawless skin of one, Ryan Kinkade, fast asleep in his own bed and making it look so easy.

Lucky him, but Keith’s roused so many times that he’s stopped counting incidents. The last one he ticked off was preemptive wakeup number nine. If it wasn’t something on his body aching for no apparent reason — a pang in his back, like getting stabbed in the kidney; a sharp twist in his chest like Shiro’s smiling at him and Keith’s having his heart kicked out by some asshole in steel-toed boots; a sudden coughing fit, as if the Garrison didn’t make all the cadets and officers get the most recent flu vaccine — then it was some nightmare or other, rearing its ugly head, and whinnying, and making Keith feel like a crazy person.

If he could dust thoughts of those dreams off his shoulders and move on, Keith might mind them less. If he could calm his mind by rustling his fingers through his hair and taming it into a vague semblance of order, then existing as a person might not feel so goddamn nauseating. Yet, as he drags himself through the same motions as any other morning — slapping on the deodorant that’s least offensive to his skin or his sense of smell, snarling under his breath at a constellation of blackheads on his chin that he still hasn’t scared off, slipping into a standard-issue black t-shirt — Keith can’t stop wondering, _“What if something goes wrong at the mission launch?”_

Not that anything _should_ go wrong. Things always could, regardless of how ready, prepared, and talented Commander Holt’s crew is, because Murphy’s Law comes for everyone, no matter what anybody does to fend it off.

Even so, reasons abound _not_ to worry about anything. The _Endeavor IV_ is one of the Garrison’s fastest interstellar crafts and one of the sturdiest. State of the art machinery rests in every inch of her interior. She’s got all the best technology for creating artificial gravity and stabilizing the crew while they travel faster than the speed of light. After a recent round of updates preparing for this mission, her med-bay sets the gold standard for the rest of the Garrison’s fleet — though it doesn’t make sense for Shiro to harp on that as often as he has, and Keith sure hopes that no one needs to use even half of what the Garrison’s medical support staff put in the _Endeavor IV_ and her sickbay. All rational signs point toward a routine launch where everything goes right and everyone is happy about humanity’s ever-pressing march toward scientific progress and maybe someday making first contact with extraterrestrial life.

Now, if only Keith’s brain would shut up — if only his body would stop making him feel like he’s suspended in the heart-stopped moment between tripping over something that you didn’t notice and crashing to the floor — then maybe Keith could do the good friend thing already. Today, he should be happy for Shiro, not sulking, brooding, pouting, or otherwise acting like there’s literally anything for him to be upset about. As if Keith even has the right to be upset.

With his orange-and-cream jacket on but unbuttoned, Keith unplugs his phone from the charger at his desk. He barely breathes while thumbing through the various news updates he gets, combing his official Garrison email, searching for any intra-Garrison alerts he can dig up. Go figure, there’s nothing new; the most recent one is from ten days ago, when a handful of the comms spec-track cadets hacked into different speaker systems on campus and spent April Fool’s Day assaulting everybody’s ears with some of the most godawful pop music they could find. About the only stuff they played that didn’t suck? Were the songs that Shiro likes.

  


* * *

  


“I don’t know for sure who did it,” Ryan whispered to Keith while Shiro busied himself with making sure the lecture hall’s projector was working right before class started. The music was still on some bubbly, over-processed, teenybopper love song that was a big deal last summer. “Nadia — Rizavi, I mean? She heard that Matthew Holt might’ve gotten in on the game—”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Keith tapped his stylus against his knuckle. “I mean, his father has all kinds of security clearances. Wouldn’t be too hard for him to clone the stuff he needs. Or to just steal it. Put it back before Commander Holt noticed.”

Ryan shrugged. “As long as they get it turned off soon? I don’t really care. I’m just gonna focus on my own work.”

Sounded like the best course of action, but Keith found it easier said than done. He couldn’t filter out the music on his own. Worse, it all got louder as another cadet meandered into the lecture hall — the skinny, well-tanned, obnoxious guy who’s probably gonna end up on the cargo pilot track. Keith thinks his name is Larry. Or Leonard. Maybe Taylor, but Keith doesn’t know why he thinks so and even after coffee, he probably won’t. But he’s leaning more toward, “Larry”? Whatever that guy’s name is, he was keening along with the mousy, nerve-grating singer, going on and on about how they love the feel of some probably-made-up boyfriend’s big hands on their asses.

It made Keith want to punch him, but Keith’s trying not to do that anymore. Not when it’ll only make things harder for Shiro. Especially not when he’s already risked so much for Keith’s sake, already put so much on the line for someone who doesn’t deserve it.

As the dumb song ended, that Tuesday morning, a lull of silence settled in. Despite knowing better than to trust the odds until he has proof that they’re learning more in his favor than not, Keith held his breath. Fighting the impulse to rock back and forth in his seat, he silently prayed that this might be the end of the garbage that had started off the day. No more music on the speakers, no more stupid pranks, no more of anything he didn’t want to deal with.

True, the odds didn’t look good — but they didn’t look bad, either. Maybe one of the professors would figure out how to fix this and send everyone back to a normal day of classes without any musical interruption. Given all the experts working and teaching at the Garrison, it didn’t make sense for this to carry on all day. Yet, as the seconds ticked down, slower than slugs, Keith couldn’t shake the fear that exactly that would happen, if someone didn’t stop things soon. In the blessed still and quiet, he crossed his fingers under the table and held out hope.

Then, a short, spunky guitar riff boomed over the speakers and a deep voice singing, _“I wanna jitterbug!”_

A round of snapping followed, and then again, _“Jitterbug!”_

It was probably for the best that the only cadets who’d so far taken their seats were Keith, Ryan, and Larry-Or-Whoever. Now that Shiro had the projector set up to his satisfaction, he’d moved to his desk at the head of the classroom. As more snapping and another, _“Jitterbug!”_ cut through the room, he perked right up. Blinking in disbelief, he looked at the rows of seats without seeing anything, then at the ceiling as if it had any answers for him.

Then, the fourth, _“Jitterbug!”_ blared through the room and Shiro sprang to his feet. A wide, sunshiney grin bloomed on his face with the high-pitched, trilling keyboard line. Shiro slipped right into the rhythm as the song properly started up. Singing along with this uptempo pop song that’s a hundred-some-odd years older than his Grandfather, Shiro swiveled his hips and danced some unfathomable steps like he was born for this instead of flying.

He also danced like he had the classroom to himself. Or possibly like Ryan and Maybe-Larry just weren’t there. Glancing over at Ryan, Keith found his roommate wide-eyes and gaping slightly — but he couldn’t hold that shock against Ryan. Not really. Most people would never expect to hear Takashi Fucking Shirogane croon, _“Wake me up before you go-go, don’t leave me hangin’ on like a yo-yo”_ while bopping and twisting his way around the lecture hall’s stage, snapping his fingers in time with the music.

“Is…” Brow knotted up tight, Ryan leaned toward Keith and whispered, “Is Shirogane okay?”

Keith nodded, trying to ignore the warm, unhelpful rush he got from the realization: Ryan was asking him about Shiro’s well-being. Asking for Keith’s opinion on Shiro like he knew better than anybody else, at least more than anybody else in the classroom, and therefore, his assessment of the situation mattered more.

Even with that reassurance, Ryan frowned. “D’you think he’s in on the prank, or…?”

Hoping that his face stayed neutral, Keith shook his head. “Shiro just really likes this song. He doesn’t usually—”

_“You put the gray skies outta my way!”_

Keith’s head snapped away from Ryan and there, right there: Shiro beamed at him with the full force of his gigawatt smile.

Quite wrapped up in his moment, Shiro sang, _“You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day!”_

Swallowing thickly, Keith folded his hands on the table. The color drained from his cheeks as he looked around the hall, checking every blind spot and hoping against hope that he wouldn’t find any traces of a pointy chin and beady, blue-indigo eyes that impossibly remind Keith of Fr. Truncheon’s pet ferrets—

 _“Turn a bright spark into a flame,”_ Shiro went on as Keith sunk in his seat. _“My beats per minute never been the same!”_

 _“Cause you’re my lady, I’m your fool!”_ Several rows away, Larry-Or-Whoever jumped to his own feet. Gamboling down the staircase to the stage, he grinned about as broadly as Shiro. _“It makes me crazy when you act so cool!”_

 _“Come on, baby, let’s not fight!”_ Sufficiently distracted, Shiro wriggled back to meet Larry on the stage. _“We’ll go dancing! Everything will be alright!”_

As they let themselves get carried away in the rest of the song, Keith heaved a sigh of relief. On one hand, the world’s most uncomfortable spotlight had moved off of him. On the other, though, Keith hadn’t seen hide or hair of Griffin, thank whatever deity may or may not have decided to intervene and show Keith mercy. If there were such a divine being out there in the great, wide universe, then they probably didn’t see sparing Keith as much of a grace right now. Still, Griffin was the last person who needed a front row seat while Shiro sang lovey-dovey lyrics at Keith, so Keith was ready to thank anything that wanted to claim credit.

Slouching onto his elbows, Ryan hummed. “Do you think Lt. Shirogane even knows who Doris Day was?”

“Do _you_?” Keith wrinkled his nose, keeping it to himself that he couldn’t rightly judge. He only knew about Doris Day because Sister Clare had trotted out so many digitally cleaned up versions of those ancient movies for the kids at the home. Back then, she’d make her charges sit down in the recreation room to watch _On Moonlight Bay_ , _April In Paris_ , and _Calamity Jane_ whenever she didn’t feel like dealing with them.

Ryan propped his cheek against his palm. “Well, I know _of_ her more than knowing her, but… I’ve seen some of her bigger movies.”

“That’s still more than most people.”

“The art of cinema has a long history. I like films, so I study that history.”

Shrugging, Keith slouched in his seat and let his legs splay out however they wanted. “I dunno if Shiro knows anything about Doris Day. Like, it wouldn’t surprise me? But it’s never come up before.”

As Shiro’s song wound down, another started, but Keith either hadn’t heard it before or didn’t remember. It was bouncy and light, bubbly with cutesy lyrics about the fumbles and foibles of teenage romance. Not Keith’s thing but inoffensive and it wasn’t hurting anybody. On the contrary, hearing it made Ryan crack a smile and bob his head in time with the music as he reviewed his reading notes. Larry-Or-Whoever spun around the stage, singing along and enjoying himself more than anyone should’ve been able to manage at this time of morning, especially on April Fool’s Day.

Meanwhile, Shiro bid Larry to have a good time, so long as he didn’t hurt himself. When he caught the idiot’s eye, Shiro gave up one of those small, painted-on smiles that he always breaks out in public because they’re soft and polite but keep up the Golden Boy front for everybody else’s sakes.

(Not that Keith’s opinion matters, but he hates those smiles. He hates seeing Shiro put them on for other people’s benefits. Hates that Shiro wears them when he doesn’t want to all to comfort people who don’t know the real Takashi Shirogane and don’t really want to. He hates how Shiro twists himself around for other people, pretending to be whatever they want most from him, because so few people in the world appreciate Shiro like he deserves. So few people see an actual person when they look at him — and Keith especially hates those sanitized, fake-ass smiles because they almost kept _him_ from seeing that Shiro is not his Golden Boy façade.)

Without another sound, Shiro left Larry to his dancing. He slunk back to the desk and slipped into his seat. Although he sighed at his data-pad, he kept his expression so restrained and carefully neutral, he could’ve been looking over the lesson-plan, writing an email to his Aunt Satomi, reading the latest _Vampire Nymphomaniacs from Planet Xandarr_ book or something equally trashy, or who even knew what else.

Midway through another song, one slow enough to make Larry get bored and go sit down, the lecture hall door burst open. It should’ve been the other cadets, finally bothering to show up and take their places for class. Instead, an officer’s gray uniform strode down the steps. One of their broad cuffs brushed on Keith as a gentle, brown hand left a quick pat on his shoulder. Soft as it was, it made Keith ball his hand up in his sleeve, clinging to _something_ certain as he tried to tell himself not to be so stupid. His knuckles strained, his fingers trembled, his teeth ground against each other of their own free will — but flinching like that was idiotic. Nobody meant to hurt him.

By the time he got himself together enough to look up, Keith found the culprit already on the stage. Tall, but shorter than Shiro, with squarish-lensed glasses and the golden, sandy tones of his hair glistening in the hall’s bright lights. Slight in the shoulders, but full in the hips, and thighs, and ass — to say nothing of the ample, chubby belly pooching out against his jacket, built up good because Shiro loves spoiling people, especially Adam, with his baking. Adam takes to it: Keith’s watched him wolf down Shiro’s lemon bars like he’s scared he won’t get enough.

Just seeing Adam, Shiro got to his feet. As his boyfriend drew closer, Shiro’s face softened like ice cream left out in the sun and he smiled like nothing else mattered. Like nothing else in the universe existed, except for Adam and whatever they needed to whisper about. Couldn’t have been _that_ serious, since Shiro kept looking so besotted. Probably, it was something like, _“Your song came on and I thought of you.”_ Adam _could_ have sent that in a text.

Then again, texts didn’t let him get right up beside Shiro. They didn’t give him room to reach up and tousle his fingers through Shiro’s perpetually fluffy forelock, smirking as he playfully mussed Shiro’s hair out of order. They certainly didn’t offer Adam the chance to grin at Shiro like daring him to give back as good as he was getting.

Had Adam gone straight to Montgomery’s classroom, where he’s supposed to be, he wouldn’t have gotten this chance to see a bright pink blush bloom on Shiro’s cheeks — which was, without question, the worst thing that could have happened on that horrible, no good Tuesday morning because _fuck_ , Shiro looked so cute like that and it set something alight in Keith’s chest. Watching him give Adam a shy grin and a snicker, Keith felt like bolting for the restrooms, or at least finding a wastebasket he could puke in. Seriously, what kind of selfish rat is he, seeing his only friend so happy and wishing that he could’ve been in Adam’s place?

While Adam curled his long fingers up in Shiro’s jacket, a new song started. Keith about choked as he recognized the soulful, mid-tempo guitar riffs — but how could he forget the first song that Dad taught him how to sing? Clutching at his sleeve, he hunched in around himself, tried not to let himself look at Adam and Shiro and their private little moment that they just needed to have on-stage in the lecture hall for some reason that’s probably the fault of love or something.

Of course, Keith failed at not watching them. His breath caught in his throat as Adam jerked Shiro down for a kiss. As Shiro leaned into it and looped his arm around Adam’s waist, Keith ducked his chin and let his bangs flop over his eyes. Joining in with the song was such a bad idea, liable to get Keith heard and outed as a greedy, useless, rotten bastard who deserves none of Shiro’s friendship and nothing that Shiro’s done for him. But God, Keith’s leg twitched and his chest shook with the effort of keeping the song pent-up inside of him, where it belonged.

Hoping against reason that Ryan didn’t hear, Keith intoned, _“You don’t know what he means to me, Jolene…”_

  


* * *

  


As usual, the mess hall’s breakfast fare leaves basically everything to be desired. Boxed orange juice from Garrison-engineered concentrate. Alleged bacon that either crumbles too quickly or has the consistency of greasy rubber. Bone-dry scrambled eggs, the same smoldering, faded, sulphurous color as the wallpaper in a colonial mansion’s nursery that will end up helping drive some poor woman to obsessive lunacy while she’s stuck on bedrest. It’s functional and filling, it doesn’t taste like garbage, and that’s all Keith can reasonably expect from it.

Personally, Keith would think that, between making genetically engineered peas and amping up the nutritional value of the dehydrated rations they send on missions, the Garrison’s culinary scientists could come up with better food than this for the mess hall. He’d also think that giving everybody better food would improve everyone’s performance and quality of life. But hey, what does Keith know? He’s just some idiot from nowhere special who knows how to fly.

Aside from the perpetual problem of the food, there’s the fact that Keith’s eating alone. Sitting at a table by himself, in a mostly empty hall because he dragged himself out of bed so early. Shiro’s awake and up to miscellaneous somethings — while Keith was in the chow line, Shiro sent a text: _“Don’t forget, I’ll meet you at the launch site”_ with a cartoon smiley face — but he and Adam won’t be here. They’ve got some pre-launch breakfast meeting with Commanders Holt and Iverson, Admirals Sanda and Dos Santos, the rest of their crew for this mission.

Which is all important, and what they should be doing. Nobody could take that from either of them, not unless they were. Besides, Keith needs to get reacquainted with eating on his own.

Probably more pressing, he needs to eat anything at all. Trudging through each bite like this won’t do him any good. In just a couple hours, Keith won’t have Shiro around to prod him about making sure he gets enough, or eating enough of the right things, or not letting himself skimp on nutrition because he doesn’t have that gut-gnawing, inside-clawing sensation that he gets when absolutely ravenous. Shiro won’t be with him for six months. He’ll need to fend for himself again, as if that’s actually something new and different for Keith.

( _“Honestly, I vote that we just let Akira’s bastard fend for himself,”_ sneered Jun’ichi Kogane, Dad’s eldest sibling, dismissively waving a hand at his sisters and their surviving brother. They might not have known that Keith was listening — not that it would’ve kept Jun’ichi from saying, _“Yes, he has our brother’s blood, but that boy is a living nightmare. He fights like a hellcat. He keeps running away. Even his mother walked out on him. Why do we owe him anything?”_ )

Keith’s scrubbing a bite of bacon through ketchup when someone kicks his shin. As he drags his gaze up from his plate, Keith lingers on a set of pale brown hands, balled up in fists. Much as he wants to scream bloody murder or start throwing punches of his own, Keith forces himself to take a deep breath, then another, and a third, for good measure. Tracing his eyes up the skinny torso in an orange-and-cream jacket, Keith smothers the impulse to audibly groan. He sets his jaw and keeps his expression flat as he looks across the table at the smug mouth and pointy, high-cheeked face of James Griffin.

Curling his fingers around his fork, Keith forces himself to keep his face neutral. As close to neutral as he can manage while Griffin’s shoving himself into Keith’s personal space. He shoves the bacon into his mouth and chews as if there’s any point to be made here.

Griffin scoots closer, narrowing his eyes and fixing them right on Keith but saying nothing. He quirks his eyebrows expectantly, like he’s trying to dare Keith into Lord only knows what. Much as he doesn’t want to take the obvious bait, Keith definitely won’t eat enough breakfast with this fucker sitting here and leering at him.

“You should clear out before Lt. Harkness gets here.” He drops his gaze back to his so-called eggs and spears some on his fork. “If they see you talking to me, they’ll let Commander Iverson know. Don’t wanna get put back on restriction, do you.”

Narrowing his eyes, Griffin fakes a pensive hum. “There’s nothing to restrict me over, Kogane.”

“Not yet. But there _will_ be, if you don’t go back to your own damn business.”

“Maybe I _am_ trying to deal with my own damn business.”

Keith peers around them, around the table, then quirks his shoulder. “Nope, I don’t see any of your own damn business here. Maybe you should try moving along already.”

Griffin frowns like a guy who’s unaccustomed to refusal. Maybe Keith knows better, but he can’t help smirking.

Sure, it would’ve been cooler if Griffin had gotten himself expelled for locking Keith in a closet, but Iverson punished Griffin as much as he could under the Garrison’s rules. Said punishment didn’t deserve to get sneezed at, either. Two weeks of docked pay would be a mild personal-level apocalypse, in Keith’s world. Considering Griffin’s parents and his trust fund, though, getting stuck on restriction was the worst part for him.

For fourteen days, Griffin had to wear a black vest over his uniform. The white block letters on the back spelled out, _“RESTRICTED,”_ letting everyone know that he was being punished. He couldn’t buy anything for himself from the commissary and he had to give up all rights to his free time. If he wasn’t doing homework, then Griffin had to suffer through doing extra grunt-labor in the library. He couldn’t go off-campus, not even with a signed permission slip from one of their professors or senior officers. Without a chaperone and permission that no one wanted to give him, he could only leave his room at all for classes, meals, drills, personal hygiene, and said library shifts.

Even if he _had_ been able to leave his room more regularly, there wasn’t much for Griffin to enjoy. Barred from the different rec-rooms in the dorms, he couldn’t participate in most of his extracurriculars, much less enjoy the televisions and video games that the Garrison has around to keep up morale and let people blow off steam. He had extra limits imposed on his data-pad, so he couldn’t access certain parts of the Internet. Other parts, he could get to, but only for thirty minutes in each twenty-four-hour period.

All up, the person who came off worst in that incident was Topher Robin, Griffin’s roommate — but even without knowing the whole story, Robin agreed that Griffin deserved every bit of his punishment. Besides, Robin could at least leave their room. He wasn’t condemned to dealing with Griffin’s perpetual sneering without a fucking break.

Keith shouldn’t be condemned to dealing with Griffin either. Nobody should need to handle this prick, and staying away from each other is best for Keith, so he points out, “The longer you stay here? The more chances you give Lt. Harkness to catch you.”

“Catch me doing _what_ , though?” Rearing up like an animal about to strike, Griffin waits for Keith to flinch. When he doesn’t, Griffin slumps back in his seat. He crosses his legs and puffs up his chest, folding his arms up and grimacing like he thinks he’s serious. Like he thinks he’s coming off as anything but a pain in the ass or a particularly annoying bird. “There’s nothing for Harkness to tattle on me over. We’re just classmates having a conversation.”

“We don’t have to, though. Which is what Harkness could take to Iverson. We don’t need to be having anything, but you’re still—”

“Oh, but we _are_ having this conversation—”

“But we _could_ just drop it, leave it alone, and let that be it.” Dimly, Keith realizes that he isn’t helping himself by talking back to Griffin. Giving this smarmy little shit-lord any ammunition opens so many doors, through which he could find so many ways to make Keith miserable — but going quiet will only make him poke Keith harder. Inhaling deeply, Keith jabs his fork into another clump of egg. “We don’t like each other, and okay, that’s fine. Why don’t you go get your food, then sit somewhere else, and we go back to ignoring each other like always.”

“Do you really think that anybody _can_ ignore you?” Nudging himself right up to the edge of his seat, Griffin scowls at Keith like Keith owes him literally anything. Also, like he thinks he could intimidate a panicked dog, much less frighten Keith. Corkscrewed in the orange fabric around his elbow, Griffin’s fist quivers. “How could anyone around here miss literally anything about you? With the way you try to show everyone up in the simulators—”

“I don’t _try_ to do anything in the simulators, okay. I just _fly_ them, like—”

“And the way you keep breaking the grading curve on every assignment, every exam—”

“I _study_. Y’know, the way that _you_ could do instead of being such a fucking—”

“And the way you’ve got _Shiro_ wrapped around your little finger?”

Keith grasps his fork so tight, it’s a wonder he doesn’t cut himself. His nose wrinkles of its own accord. His lips twist up despite him. He tries to turn his gasp into deep breathing, something that could steady him. Choking down his eggs, he tries to think about Shiro. Not like how Griffin means. But Shiro, Keith’s only friend. Shiro, who’s put his entire career on the line for Keith’s sake. Shiro, who will never give up on Keith. Shiro, who deserves so much better than cleaning up another mess that Keith could’ve avoided making if he hadn’t yielded to temptation and punched something — or worse, someone.

Of course, it’s easier to resist that urge with people who don’t grate Keith’s nerves as much as Griffin. With his stupidly well-shaped mouth jutting out in a sardonic pout. With his chestnut hair, flopping to one side of his face, screaming at everyone how much he wants them to think he doesn’t care. With his gleaming eyes zeroed in on Keith, making him itch for a fight, something where he can show Griffin up without him chalking it up to Shiro, without dragging _Shiro_ into _Keith’s_ problems, and fuck, Griffin’s puckering his lips like—

Snarling, Keith digs the edge of his fork harder into his fingers. He drives the other hand’s nails into his palm. But he doesn’t smack the table. That would call down attention that he doesn’t want to deal with right now. Worse, Griffin might think he’s getting to Keith.

Which he maybe might be — but _he_ doesn’t need to know that.

Nose wrinkled until he looks like a pig, Griffin drawls, “Awww, nothing to say for yourself now, flyboy? Can’t you even _pretend_ to stand up for the guy who got you in here—”

“My scores on the entrance exams got me in—”

“Which you never would’ve taken if Shiro hadn’t begged—”

“Like I even _knew_ that he was doing that! How could I have!”

“Oh, riiiiiiight, how stupid of me to forget.” Griffin smirks like the full moon’s light glinting off a knife-blade. “Of _course_ , you couldn’t have done anything for Shiro at the time because you were stuck in a holding—”

“All I do for Shiro is treat him like a _person_ —”

“A likely story—”

“Maybe that’s too much for _some_ of you around here—”

“Come _on_ , do you think I’m an _idiot_?”

“Why do I need to bother thinking that? You swagger around here and _flaunt it_ —”

“Oh, like you’re any better. Acting like Shiro only gives you special attention, and defends you to professors and the brass, smiles at you the way he does, what? Because you’re _nice_ to him?” Shaking his head scatters hair all over his face. When Griffin flips it back, he narrows his eyes to slits. “He has tons of people lining up for miles to suck his dick — literally _and_ metaphorically. Do you seriously expect me to believe that he thinks _you’re_ worth literally anything? That _you’ve_ got something nobody else can give him?”

“Sounds like you already believe that.” With no distractions left on his plate, Keith dropped his fork. Resting one cheek in his palm, he drummed his fingertips on the table. “I mean, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have a reason to bother me. Especially not about Shiro’s dick like I know literally anything about it.”

“Obviously, you _do_ , though. Everybody knows that you’re his _pet_ —”

“That’s news to me. And to Shiro. _And_ to Lt. West—”

“Yeah, like anybody with a brain would tell their boyfriend that they’re screwing around and taking advantage—”

“There’s nothing for me or Shiro to hide. His _boyfriend_ knows that. So does everybody else.” Before he can think better of it, Keith prods, “Real question is: why don’t _you_ understand this? You’re supposed to be a genius, right? Or are you just obsessed with Shiro’s dick?”

Gulping, Griffin hugs himself straitjacket-tight. Scarlet flares up on his cheeks and his eyes nearly bug out of his head. Something flashes behind them as his mouth contorts into a deep grimace. He looks like he could be sick — appropriate, since Keith feels equally nauseated from simply thinking about all of this.

But he’s going to help nobody by lingering here any longer. He needs to get away from Griffin. Needs to get outside, get some fresh air before the Titan mission launches. There will be nothing but fresh air at the launch site, sure, but Keith needs to get out of here. Needs to get somewhere he can calm down.

With a growl, Griffin rams his boot at Keith’s shin. “Why would he be so good to you without getting something out of it.”

“It’s called, ‘having _friends_ ,’ jackass. Maybe you should try it.” Keith’s heart clangs around his chest cavity, racing like it wants to keep up with the _Endeavor IV_. Still, he inhales deeply and shoves himself away from the table, slings his messenger bag’s strap over his shoulder. Picking up his tray, he adds, “Assuming anyone could even _stand_ to be your friend.”

While Griffin’s gaping at him, no doubt hung up on the idea that anyone would have the audacity to say that to his face, Keith bolts out of the mess hall.

Once his feet hit the pavement, he breaks into a jog. Before too long, he’s full-on running, pumping his arms and legs like it’s his only hope for anything ever getting better. He dodges around a pair of fellow cadets and dimly, he thinks one of them might be Garrett. Very narrowly, Keith manages to dodge Professor Montgomery and Mr. Harris. Keith could slow down. He could walk like a normal person; perhaps he should. At the very least, he could stop tearing through the quad like a tornado crammed inside a human body — but that thought only makes Keith throw himself even further into booking it. Running harder, running faster, charging like he’s got no other option.

The sooner Keith gets to the launch site — the sooner he gets to Shiro and the more distance he puts between himself and Griffin — the better.

  


* * *

  


Shiro first came to the Garrison’s main campus as an infant, cocooned in a pink blanket while Ryou was wrapped up in a yellow one.

He’s heard all about it, about Mom getting called in before her maternity leave was up because no one else could properly instruct the senior cadets in piloting a particularly tricky obstacle course. Dad could’ve stayed home, but one of his research projects made unexpected leaps ahead and he couldn’t help with it from home. Rather than leaving Shiro and Ryou with their aunts and grandparents, Hikaru and Noshiko decided to introduce their sons to the Galaxy Garrison. Some versions of the story even specify that Aunt Naoko had crocheted those baby blankets, despite only being Aunt Satomi’s girlfriend at the time, rather than her wife.

Shiro’s seen photographs from that day, even has some of them in one of the albums on his bookshelf, back at his and Ryou’s place outside of town — but they’re like looking of relics from someone else’s life. They resonate with him enough, he guesses, but only because he recognizes so many of the people in them. In one picture, Mom stands by the obstacle course’s launch-and-landing strip, carrying both of her sons and beaming with pride, all round, flushed cheeks with her black hair in a high ponytail. In another, Dad grins, holding Shiro in one arm and a tiny orange t-shirt in the other; black block letters on the shirt spell out, _“Galaxy Garrison Class of 2110”_ (Dad’s colleagues had gotten a pair of these made, one for each twin, based on the year when Shiro would’ve graduated, if he hadn’t crammed his summers full of extra coursework).

This first visit to the Garrison gave the world one of Shiro’s favorite photos of Uncle Mitch. It’s a candid shot, so he isn’t looking at the camera. With fewer lines on his face and both eyes still intact, he looks so young that it’s almost unnerving (never mind the fact that he was already going on forty-six). But he’s smiling, the same small, warm smile that’s saved Shiro’s life before, whether or not Uncle Mitch realizes it. Fittingly, he’s holding Shiro in the picture, with some of the pink blanket draped over his forearm. His free hand’s finger hovers close to Shiro, with a tiny set of fingers curled around it. Safe in his godfather’s arms and blissfully unaware of everything, Shiro’s infant self yawns.

He’d never say so where most people could hear, but there’s a reason why Shiro loves that picture. Namely: it’s one of the only shots he’s ever seen where Uncle Mitch looks happy. Not just proud or content or trying his best, but honest to God joyful.

The first campus visit that Shiro actually remembers — one of the few from childhood where his memories are his own, rather than secondhand recollections he’s strung together like a rosary or a strand of juzu beads — happened when he and Ryou were five years and nine months old, and prone to pedantically correcting anyone who listed any other number.

Friday, 20th November, 2093, two days before Mom’s actual birthday but Dad wanted to give her a surprise anyway. Since he wasn’t teaching any Friday classes that semester, he caught an early bullet-train to Palo Alto. He got out to Stanford before Obaasan and Ojiisan needed to be anywhere, collected Shiro and Ryou from their grandparents, then got them back to Plaht City before lunchtime. Bringing all of Mom’s boys together to see her show off on a course where she’d held the top three records for going on a decade, letting Shiro and Ryou see their mother fly while getting Noshiko to her sons sooner than she would’ve gotten to them otherwise… Such a great idea, in theory. Utterly brilliant, on Dad’s part.

Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to account for his Kashi, and it nearly blew the surprise wide open. While Ryou was content to sit with their godfather in Uncle Mitch’s office, alternately coloring, reading, and playing with toy dinosaurs, Kashi couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t stay cooped up away from the excitement, not while he was _at the Garrison_ , the seemingly magical place that his family had helped build and that he wanted to serve as well, when he was old enough. Double unfortunately, everything at the Garrison counted as exciting, in Kashi’s mind.

He’d even dressed up for the occasion. Sure, Kashi could’ve worn a nice new sweater like Ryou. Instead, he’d tucked a black t-shirt into his jeans, the same way that Mom always tucked her t-shirt into her uniform’s trousers. Over top of this, Kashi donned the jacket that Aunt Naoko had made for him when he’d wanted one like Mom’s. True, it wasn’t the right shade of gray, the cuffs were pink not orange (because Naoko had told Kashi that everyone picked the colors of their cuffs, and lots of people simply liked orange best), the black piping had some slight differences from an actual officer’s jacket, and the insignia and shoulder-stripes were made of felt. Still, everything was close enough to real to make tiny-Kashi happy.

Wearing his jacket, feeling like the entire universe was made of hope and promise, Kashi tailed Hikaru to as many places as he could. He stuck close to his Dad’s side, felt so proud of himself for keeping up because he didn’t realize that Dad was walking more slowly on purpose. When they paused anywhere, Kashi struggled to emulate the cadets and officers, squaring his shoulders as much as he could and keeping his head high, his arms folded behind his back. For all he didn’t understand most of the conversations going on several feet above his head, Kashi hung on every word and nodded along regardless, figuring out when to do so by watching when Dad nodded. After all, Dad knew what was going on, so he would know what to agree with.

About the only thing that Kashi wouldn’t emulate of Dad’s at that age, was the way he handled his own gray jacket. Keeping his buttons done up right seemed like it might’ve been beyond Dad’s grasp. While breaking out his toolbox and digging into a job, he’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows. He didn’t mind getting sprayed with oil or engine grease, even when he caught those splashes on the chest.

Of course, it made a kind of sense: Hikaru Shirogane was a scientist and technician, perpetually hands-on in his work. He couldn’t afford to care too much about looking perfect or else he wouldn’t give the best efforts to his job. Regardless, Kashi wanted to keep his jacket as pristine as Mom kept hers.

Toward the middle of that afternoon, Hikaru led Kashi out of the Ahn Building. Under a light dusting of clouds and the pale November sun, they trotted through the quad, heading to one of the hangars at the far northern end of campus. Practically everything made Kashi gasp and stare in starry-eyed wonder, from the genetically modified trees to the different buildings, to the periodic, pedastled brass statues of important Admirals and scientists from the Garrison’s history (at least two of which shared his family’s name). Yet, nothing prepared him for what waited at Dad’s next job.

As Kashi took in the sight of the _Endeavor III_ , he let his mouth fall open. Dimly, he felt certain that either his face would get stuck that way, or his eyes would pop out of his head. Sure, he’d seen pictures of the Garrison’s spacecrafts, both current and historical, but none compared to standing by the real deal. Everything about the _Endeavor III_ seemed unfathomable, completely larger-than-life. Under the hangar’s lights, her hull’s gray paint had a sheen that called to Kashi, inviting him to examine the craft more closely, beckoning him to come on, take a chance, because he knew what he really wanted, what could possibly go wrong.

Casting a glance up at Dad (currently preoccupied with asking someone in an orange jacket for details about the current problem), Kashi did the best thing he could think of: he took a deep breath, he closed his eyes, and he asked himself what Mom would do, were she to find herself in a similar situation.

On one hand, he thought about Aunt Satomi and Naoko’s wedding, that past June. In the church’s rec-room, while Satomi was putting on her elegant black bridal gown, Mom told Kashi to behave himself, sit patiently with his brother, and not go climbing on the tables. Naturally, this made him want to climb on all the tables. Lifting him off of one for the third time in under twenty minutes, Mom sighed in the way that she always did when things were not going how she’d planned or how she wanted.

 _“Kashi, I swear to the Christian God, and Benzaiten, and everyone else you can imagine,”_ she murmured, crouching by the linoleum so she could smooth the wrinkles out of his trousers and pint-sized tuxedo jacket. _“Sometimes, you are far too much my son.”_

He frowned, wrinkling his nose at her. _“But… I love you? And you’re my mom? So, what’s bad about me being your son?”_

 _“Nothing is_ ** _bad_** _about it, really, it’s just…”_ Huffing, Mom gently combed his hair back into place with her warm, steady fingers. _“Being more like your father wouldn’t be bad for you, either. He’s better than both of us at staying out of trouble.”_

So, there was one idea. Mom might’ve thought that answering the _Endeavor III_ ’s silent call was asking for trouble.

On the other hand, though, Mom was a pilot. It was what she did. Tenō-Ojiisan, her father, had said that Mom was flying before she could walk. Which didn’t make any logical sense at all, but maybe it didn’t matter when you were as good as Mom. All right, Kashi hadn’t really studied, yet. He had murky, garbled ideas about how to pilot, but little in the way of actual know-how. Getting closer to the ship, that could’ve helped him understand it better, yeah? He could just… sneak away from Dad’s side, dart over to the ship, and touch her. He’d be right back, before Dad even noticed he was gone.

Except what could Kashi _really_ learn, just from touching the outside of the ship? Not much, probably. It wasn’t like he was psychic, or like he had magic powers like the heroes in all of Ryou’s favorite stories. He was just a kid, standing in front of a spaceship, waiting for the day when he could fly one for himself and not in some dumb video game.

Then, as Dad told the cadet what he might need to do, Kashi spotted it: the _Endeavor III_ ’s door, unguarded and hanging wide open.

His eyes darted back up to Dad’s profile. Holding his breath, Kashi took one big step to the side. Dad didn’t notice. Another step away, and Dad didn’t break off from talking to Cadet Whoever. One more step and Dad didn’t even look at Kashi. In the back of his mind, a voice like Ryou’s piped up, telling him that this might’ve been a bad idea. If Dad spotted Kashi’s absence, he’d be scared. Something could go wrong inside the craft. So many _bad things_ could happen…

But glancing back to that open door, Kashi’s heart twisted up with longing. He could’ve learned _so much_ from going into the ship. He wouldn’t have needed to touch any of the controls. He could run over there and be right back, before Dad realized that anything was wrong. Kashi took a deep breath. Looked from the ship to Dad, then back to the ship. He asked himself again: _“What would_ ** _Mom_** _do?”_

Balling his hands up in fists, Kashi darted toward the _Endeavor III_. His sneakers pounded on the pavement like his heart pounded in his chest. He stumbled into slowing down. Crept closer to the open door. Holding up ever so briefly, he reached out, ghosted his fingers down the cool metal of the hub — and oh, his whole body shivered as a sigh clawed its way out of him. _So, this_ , he thought, _this is what a spaceship feels like._

Timidly, he peeked around the open door. Trouble didn’t matter anymore. Lingering in the threshold, brushing his hand up and down one side of the doorway, Kashi felt something else, something that set a fire in his chest while making him wonder if he deserved to be there. Now, in retrospect, he knows what it was: piety. Reverence. Awe. The promise that he was right where he belonged, brought there by something deep within him that connected with the very forces that move the universe, and so help him, he needed to get back here, _needed_ to learn what he was doing so everyone would _know_ that he belonged here.  


—and then, a big, steady hand catching him by the wrist.

“Hey, hey there, fella,” laughed a warm, even voice, smooth and impossibly friendly. “Aren’t you a little short for a Garrison cadet?”

“I’m not _short_!” Setting his jaw, Kashi held his breath and slowly turned his head toward whoever had caught him.

While Kashi recognized the man’s jacket as that of a Garrison officer, that was the only familiar thing about him. A smile lit up his thin, pale pink cheeks and made it hard for Kashi to keep up glaring. Small, honey-colored eyes twinkled behind a set of wire-rim glasses. His brown hair had clearly been combed into place, but somehow, it also looked tousled. The color reminded Kashi of a beaver, except for the pieces that had started graying. For all he felt like he should’ve known who the man was, Kashi couldn’t place a name.

There could’ve been clues in the uniform, though. Tilting his head, Kashi squinted at the insignia on the man’s uniform. Four gold stripes on the shoulders; whoever he was, he must’ve been the same rank as Mom and Uncle Mitch. Colored bars sat pinned to his chest, but Kashi couldn’t recall which ones meant which.

As the man opened his mouth, Kashi jumped in to tell him, “My Mom’s a pilot. She’s the best there ever was.”

“Is that so.” Trying to tug free only made the man smile more gently. “Are _you_ a pilot, though?”

“I’m _gonna_ be.” Kashi pushed himself to full height, puffed up his chest, and pouted like he meant business. “Just like my Mom. We’ll fly to space together, when I grow up. She _said_ so.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will, son. As long as you don’t go sneaking into crafts that you can’t fly yet.”

“I wasn’t touching anything!” He glanced guiltily at the doorway. In the face of a quizzically arched eyebrow, Kashi slouched. He tried not to feel like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “…Okay, I wasn’t touching anything _important_.”

“Well, I know that you weren’t.” Still smiling in a way that Kashi couldn’t get a read on, the man let go of Kashi’s wrist. “But do _you_ know what in the craft is or isn’t important?”

Fussing with his hot pink cuffs, Kashi paused and racked his brain about that question. No, he didn’t know who this man was. Yes, he’d been told to be careful, when talking to strangers. But the man was wearing a Garrison officer’s uniform — and a real one, at that, not a jacket that’d simply been made to look like Mom’s. Moreover, he was talking to Kashi in a way that didn’t make him feel like some stupid kid who couldn’t possibly know what he wanted.

He talked like he actually believed that Kashi could make it to the Garrison.

Swallowing thickly, Kashi shook his head, _“No.”_

He meant to say so aloud, too. Meant to confirm for sure that he definitely didn’t know what was or wasn’t important in the ship. But before he could, someone else called Kashi’s name. He looked around wildly without seeing anybody or spotting anything. Heavy boots smacked into the pavement, closing in on Kashi and the man who’d caught him. Even so, Kashi couldn’t see where they were or who was wearing them.

Next thing he knew, he got scooped up off the ramp into the ship. Above Kashi’s head, Dad sighed in audible relief.

“Oh, my God, Kashi…” Panting, Dad held Kashi to his chest and kissed his forehead. “Don’t scare me like that, kiddo.”

Kashi buried his face in Dad’s shoulder, grumbling, “Wasn’t _doing_ anything…”

“I’m so sorry about this, Sam. He’s… curious. And trying to learn about impulse-control. Didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”

The other man chuckled. “No trouble at all, Hikaru. He just got a little over-eager and tried to start his training early. Isn’t that right?”

Kashi shrugged and clung closer to his Dad.

With a soft laugh and a pat on Kashi’s back, Dad eased him back out so he could face the other man. “Kashi, meet Lt. Commander Samuel Holt. He’s worked with me and your Mom on a few missions before.”

Lt. Commander Holt held out a hand for Kashi and shook it like he would’ve done with another adult. “Study hard once you get into the Garrison,” he said, “and I’m sure that we’ll be flying together quite a bit ourselves. Think you can do that? And _not_ go trying to to fly anything you aren’t ready for, yet?”

Warmth and hope washed over Kashi as he nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

“Well, then.” Smiling, Lt. Commander Holt gave Kashi a quick salute. “I’ll be looking forward to having you in class, son. Then, heading to the stars.”

Saluting back, Kashi knocked Dad’s glasses askew — but did that really matter? Somebody outside of his own family believed that he would make it to the Garrison. Someone other than his godfather and his blood relations had faith in him, and everything was wonderful. Lt. Commander Sam Holt had only just met Kashi, but one brief conversation had led him to trust that Kashi would be an ace pilot someday, that he’d come to trust Kashi with his life in deep space, and that trust made Kashi certain that he could do anything he set his mind to, with enough dedication, perseverance, endurance, and hard work.

Right now, barely two hours out from leaving on his his next mission — the longest that he’s been on, yet — Shiro would give almost anything to feel like that again.

  


* * *

  


The Titan launch site isn’t anywhere near as intimidating as Shiro expected. By now, he should probably be used to this, because he always falls into this same pattern. He builds mission launches up in his head and turns them into more than they really are. Convincing himself that, somehow, he’s going to make the wrong choice, do the wrong thing, and drag everyone down to Hell with him.

Inevitably, nothing goes that terribly, but instead of relief, Shiro finds exhaustion and a sense of abiding, deep stupidity.

At least he’s used to his current position: dolled up in his dress grays for the sake of photographs and press releases, standing straight-backed slightly behind Commander Holt and beside Adam, smiling for the cameras and the crowds as if everything is and always shall be fine in this, the best of all possible worlds. Faking his way through this is second nature to Shiro now, no matter how much it makes him wish he could face-plant in his pillow and stay there for the next ten days.

On the other hand, there’s a not-inconsiderable point about the mission’s destination and it nags at the back of Shiro’s mind, every time he forces himself to smile. Something about Titan threatens to expose the cracks in any façade that he’s crafted for himself. On its own, this particular moon of Saturn means very little. As ever, though, context makes things thickety for everyone. For Shiro, specifically, Titan raises questions of his family’s history, and whether or not that might repeat itself.

But there’s barely any time left before lift-off, so Shiro can’t stand wasting it. Bad enough that he needs to waste his dwindling minutes on Earth as the Golden Boy when he _wants_ to be himself. He can’t squander whatever moments he has _as Shiro_ by pondering questions that he can’t answer, about subjects that should not be public business.

Trying to banish such nonsense from his mind, Shiro keeps his back straight and his hands clasped behind him as Uncle Mitch, Admiral Sanda, and Commander Holt go through their speeches about human potential, boundless opportunity, and the importance of the Galaxy Garrison’s work. He digs his fingertips into the backs of his hands, his knuckles likely going ghastly white from Shiro’s insistence on gripping himself so tightly that he wonders if he might leave bruises, this time. Part of him hopes that he does, even if they aren’t too serious.

If Shiro were going to be on Earth for his usual Wednesday appointment with Dr. Hall, his therapist, she’d make him tell her about how he let himself do this when he knows that she counts it as self-harm. She’d get extra mileage out of Shiro doing it during an occasion that calls for happiness, a moment in time when he should breathe more easily and smile more genuinely than usual. She’d break out that borderline condescending, honeyed tone she always uses when she remind him that this means Shiro has to start counting days all over again.

Wriggling around the armchair he likes in her office, Shiro would need to fight the impulse to tell her that he hasn’t kept track of that since before he and Adam got together. What’s the point when practically everything counts as self-harm and Shiro never stays clean for an entire week?

Not that anyone cares, but Shiro does have an excuse for this instance of technical self-harm. Namely: he can’t risk upsetting his electro-stimulator bracelet and turning it on when he doesn’t need it. Aside from the chance that the mics pick up its telltale beeping, Shiro’s batteries will be a finite resource while he’s up in space. He doesn’t feel any symptoms looming on the horizon, like tornadoes that exist exclusively to punish him, and even an accidental activation can drain a precious electrical charge.

It’s like the story with his painkillers, except Shiro needs to keep those rationed even more strictly. Maybe the Garrison’s medical support staff worked closely with Shiro’s primary care physician and his specialist. Maybe they fastidiously scrutinized six months of logs that Shiro kept about how often he felt like he needed which of his meds, how often he took them, and how much he felt he might need them in the coming half-year — but human error could still rear its ugly head and leave Shiro high and dry, overly rationing his medication and suffering for it. So, he can’t afford to waste any of his gabapentin over minor aches that he could power through instead. He must be sure he only breaks into his supply when he absolutely needs it.

In turn, both of these things are like the situation that Shiro finds himself in, now. By the time he fights over to one of launch site’s back-corners, to the person he most wants to see right now, he and Keith don’t have long, all because other people — the ones who Shiro doesn’t want to bother with — decided to ask him for opinions and statements and please, Lt. Shirogane, just one more picture for the press.

Slumped against the chain-link fence and hugging himself, Keith tries to smirk. Although he starts trying to say something, Keith cuts himself off mid-syllable. Ducking his chin, he falls silent. When Shiro edges closer, trying to puzzle out how one of his only friends is doing, Keith shrugs and makes a noncommittal sound.

“Well,” Shiro says, dumbly. “It means a lot to me that you came.”

“Where’s your brother, anyway?” Keith rubs at his elbow and avoids Shiro’s eyes. “Did he get sick or something?”

“In a manner of speaking? It isn’t really—”

“If he isn’t projectile vomiting or running a brain-melting fever? Then you could tell him to drag his ass out of bed and come see you off.”

“It’s not that simple.” With a soft sigh, Shiro leans beside Keith. “I went to see Ryou last night. Made us dinner. Slept at home, actually—”

“But you had to be up early—”

“Yeah, well… Leaving my brother alone after an anxiety attack wasn’t something I could do in good conscience.” Giving Keith’s stunned, confused expression a small smile, Shiro quirks his shoulders. “I’m just surprised it took him so long to get here.”

“But you’ve gone into deep space before, right? Shouldn’t he be used to this?”

“It’s not about space in general, it’s…” Another sigh and Shiro turns his eyes up to the _Endeavor IV_. “Our parents died on Titan. They took the last _Endeavor_ -line craft. Got caught in a storm while landing, crashed despite the crew’s best efforts. So, Ryou’s been trying to talk me out of going on the mission, but… By his standards? He’s kept things together remarkably well.”

Without a word, Keith butts his shoulder against Shiro’s. “Just because your parents crashed, doesn’t mean you will.”

Nodding, Shiro digs around in his pocket. “I’m not planning on it, but all the same—”

“Shiro, no. Don’t say anything, okay? You don’t — you aren’t—”

Keith cuts himself off at the sound of something jingling. For a moment, he blinks at the set of keys that Shiro’s holding up for him. It’s adorable, the way he knots his brow, scrunches up his face like a confused rabbit, and shakes his head, sending his perpetually messy hair flopping every which way.

“Stop talking like that,” Keith whispers. “You’re coming back, okay? You know you’re coming back. _Nothing bad_ is gonna happen to you up there, so, like? Come on, you _can’t_ give me your fucking hover-bike.”

“I’m _not_ giving it to you.” With a barely-there snort, Shiro turns to face Keith more fully. Even through his heavy jacket, the fence digs at his bicep hard enough for Shiro to feel it. “I don’t trust anyone else to take care of it while I’m gone, Keith.”

While his eyes mist over, Keith doesn’t miss a beat in catching the keys. His smile wobbles, but it’s one of the most genuine expressions that Shiro’s ever seen on anybody’s face.

Dropping a hand to Keith’s shoulder, Shiro asks, “Keep the engine warm for me ‘til I get back?”

Keith’s smile cracks, explodes into a full-blown grin. “You know I will.”


End file.
